


The Afterlife of Doctor John H. Watson

by flawedamythyst



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Ghost!Watson, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 15:48:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An account of Doctor Watson's actions in the years following his death.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Betaed by Mresundance. Thank you so much!</p>
<p>Some small sections of the text are stolen from ACD's The Blanched Soldier and The Lion's Mane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Afterlife of Doctor John H. Watson

My death was unexpected.

It seems an odd sentence to write but Holmes has requested an account of the last few years from my viewpoint and that seems the logical place to start. I wonder if speaking it would be less strange than writing it. Given my current limitations, it would certainly be easier, but I have always expressed myself best on paper. Writing this as if it is one of Holmes's cases will hopefully help me find ways to phrase the more difficult sections, as well as giving me something to do while Holmes sleeps. If it takes me a whole night to muster the strength to hold a pen long enough to write a paragraph or two, well, I have nothing better to do with my time.

The day I died I had difficulties holding my pen as well, but I was too caught up in trying to express how brilliant Holmes had been on our last case to do more than mutter a curse word every time the pen slipped from my fingers. 

Holmes noticed that something was amiss. Although I did have a tendency to swear under my breath when the words were not flowing, it was rare for me to do so to that extent.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I'm fine,” I replied, fumbling with my pen again. My speech came out unexpectedly slurred and, when my right hand would not pick up my pen at all, my internal diagnostician put the facts together. Panic overwhelmed me. I needed a doctor immediately. 

I tried to stand, but my right leg refused to cooperate and I fell back into my seat.

“Watson!” exclaimed Holmes, throwing down his newspaper and leaping to his feet.

I tried to stand again, and this time lost my balance completely and fell to the floor.

“Good lord!” exclaimed Holmes. “MRS. HUDSON!” he bellowed, hurrying to my side and crouching beside me. “Watson, what's wrong?”

I could not tell him. I could not get my thoughts into the proper order, let alone express them. 

Mrs. Hudson scurried in and Holmes commanded her to get a doctor. “Immediately!”

I didn't hear either her reply or her departure. I was too focused on Holmes's face, specifically on the fear in his eyes. It reminded me of when I had been shot by Killer Evans and he had been afraid that I was more seriously wounded than I was.

_It is serious this time,_ floated through my mind. I knew just how unlikely it was that I would survive. I had known many cases of men struck down by an apoplexy this speedy; too few of them had seen another dawn. Those that had continued to exist in such a miserable state that I would prefer death.

“Come on, Watson,” said Holmes. “What should I be doing? Speak to me!”

There was nothing to be done. There was no medicine or treatment to prevent my brain from disintegrating. This was to be our last living conversation and I could barely focus on his face, let alone say anything worthy.

“Holmes,” I tried, but the noise I made was closer to a sound an animal might make than a man. I could not even say his name. I was dying and I could not speak my last words. It is impossible to express the anguish I felt.

My mind became heavy, as if someone was pouring cement into my brain, slowing all the processes and destroying the mechanisms. I heard myself make a strange, breathy noise that meant nothing.

“Watson,” said Holmes, in a voice saturated with more emotion than I had thought him capable of. “You must stay, I can not lose you.”

I clutched at his arm as my mind fractured. For a brief moment I thought I felt the flutter of lips against my own; then I was gone.

****

When I awoke, I was still in the sitting room at 221B but I was alone. I sat up from the floor and flexed my right hand, taking pleasure in the way it responded exactly as commanded. What had happened? Had I misdiagnosed myself? Perhaps it had not been an apoplexy after all, but merely something that acted in the same way, and yet had only a temporary effect. Was there such a thing?

At any rate, why was I alone and lying on the floor? Surely whoever Holmes had called to assist me would have at least moved me to my bed to recover? I stood and called for Holmes, relieved to find that my control over my speech had returned as well. I was thinking clearly and my body was working correctly. It could not have been an apoplexy. 

There was no answer from anywhere in our rooms. Why would he have left whilst I was still unconscious?

At any rate, I had been given a second chance. When I did find where Holmes had got to, I would be able to say all the words that I had been unable to get past my lips earlier. I had not realised how much I wanted to express them until I thought I had lost all chance to do so. It is not the first time I have only realised the value of something once it was lost – or thought lost. I had not realised how greatly I treasured my evenings of quiet companionship with Mary until she grew too ill to leave her bed, or how vital to my happiness the adventures I went on with Holmes were until I had to spend three years without them, thinking that I would never have them back.

When I had thought I was dying, all I could think was that Holmes would never know the depth of my feelings, or how much I appreciated all the ways in which our lives had intertwined. That seemed impossible to allow, even if the acknowledgement of such sentiment made him uncomfortable.

His expression as he clutched me in his arms as I lost consciousness, and the desperation with which he had begged me to stay with him came to me. Would he really be discomfited by a declaration from me when he had already made one of his own, albeit in actions rather than words?

Not to mention my hazy recollection of his lips pressed to my own. If that had been more than a product of my addled mind, perhaps his response to my words would be even more enthusiastic than I could bear to hope for?

The front door to the building opened and I hurried out of our rooms to the head of the stairs to see who was there, and if they knew what had happened.

It was Holmes. He looked weary and worn down, although his expression was blank and set. Mrs. Hudson hurried out of her room before I could call to him.

“Oh, Mr. Holmes,” she said, fluttering her hands. “What news?”

Holmes shook his head. “I'm afraid Doctor Watson has gone,” he said in a tightly controlled voice.

“Oh,” she gasped, raising her hand to her mouth. “Oh, the poor man!”

“I'm not gone,” I said, unwilling to see either of them upset for my sake. “I'm up here.”

There was no sign from either of them that they had heard me.

“Anstruther said that it was reasonably quick, and that he would not have felt any pain,” said Holmes.

“Well, that's something,” said Mrs. Hudson in a voice that did not sound convinced.

Were they still talking about me? I descended the stairs. “I'm right here, old fellow,” I said, speaking a little louder. “There's no need for worry.”

Holmes didn't look at me, didn't even blink as I walked towards him. I began to have a very nasty suspicion.

I put my hand on Holmes's arm and it passed straight through. 

“Oh God,” I whispered, as much a prayer as an exclamation. I waved my arms frantically in front of Holmes's face but he continued to focus on Mrs. Hudson rather than me, despite the fact that I was stood between them.

“Holmes!” I shouted, and tried to shake him.

I could not grip his shoulders. I could not even feel them; my hands passed through his flesh.

“No, please, _no_.” 

I didn't know who I was talking to, only that the realisation was too horrible to be made without vocalisation.

I was dead. I was dead, and some form of spirit that Holmes could not perceive. He likely would never see nor hear me again.

I grew increasingly panicked in my attempts to gain physical contact with Holmes. None of them had any effect on him – my limbs merely passed through him as if he were nothing but air. Or, perhaps more accurately, as if they were.

“I'll bring you some tea up,” said Mrs. Hudson, clearly trying to stick to the usual routines.

Holmes shook his head impatiently. “I do not want anything,” he said. “Please do not disturb me for the rest of the day.” 

He started up the stairs without waiting for a response, stepping right through me on the way. I barely felt him at all. 

It was that, I think, which made me realise just how terrible my position was.

“Holmes!” I shouted. “Holmes, I'm here! Look!”

He continued up the stairs without a pause.

I turned to Mrs. Hudson. “Mrs. Hudson,” I begged. “Please – can you hear me?”

She watched Holmes ascend the stairs, then shook her head sadly and turned back to her own rooms.

I hurried after Holmes, noticing for the first time that all traces of the stiffness in my leg that had lingered ever since I was shot in Afghanistan had disappeared. I would have much preferred to have back all the pain I had felt when I was newly wounded than to be unable to speak to Holmes.

I passed through him again as I rushed up to our rooms, shivering at the echo of sensation. Panic shot through me and I stood at the top of the stairs, shouting Holmes's name and waving like a lunatic.

It had no effect. He slowly climbed all seventeen steps, passing through me again. He went into our sitting room, immune to all my attempts. It was a nightmare of the very worst kind.

He shut the door firmly behind himself and locked it, and then just stood for a moment, looking over the room as if seeing it for the first time. His eyes lingered on the chair I was accustomed to sitting in before the fireplace; then the desk where I had spent so many hours writing and where I had been just before my attack; and, finally, on the Morocco case that sat on the mantelpiece.

“Oh, don't you bloody dare,” I said, too filled with frustrated fury to speak more civilly. The only way the day could get worse would be if I had to watch Holmes inject himself with that poison while I was unable to do anything. It had taken a great deal of hard work from both of us, over many months, in order to wean him from the grip of that stuff and I did not want to see that undone. It did not matter than I knew the case was currently empty of the drug itself and contained only his syringe; the drug was not difficult to obtain.

Fortunately, Holmes's eyes dropped from the case and he merely crossed to his favoured chair and sank into it.

He remained there for the rest of the day, and all through the night. He neither spoke nor moved, nor even betrayed any emotion on his face other than a bleak melancholy. I spent several hours attempting to attract his attention by shouting or touching him, or moving any of the many objects within the room, but all my efforts were useless. Finally, I sank into my own chair, where his gaze rested, and tried to pretend that it was merely one of those evenings when he was so fixated on puzzling through a problem that he had mentally walled himself off from the outside world.

Eventually the sun came up. Holmes blinked several times, then focused on the beam of light on the wall. He let out a very long, slow breath, and his head dipped. He screwed his eyes tightly shut and for a shocking moment, I thought he might be about to shed tears. Instead, he took in several ragged breaths and then set his shoulders and looked up again, with no trace of emotion on his face. I knew him too well to think that meant he was feeling none, however.

“Holmes,” I said uselessly, wishing there was something I could do. I have always been a man of action, and to know that there was nothing I could do, no way I could even affect the world Holmes inhabited and find some way to console him, was bitter indeed.

Holmes sat for five more minutes, and then stood and stiffly crossed to his room, shutting the door behind him. I wanted to follow him, but going inside his bedroom, where I had only very rarely been in the years we had lived together, seemed an invasion of his privacy. Instead I stayed where I was as the world began to wake up and the sun rose higher. The noises from the street increased: voices calling to each other, the bustle of people passing by and carriages rumbling over the stones of Baker Street. 

The maid, Brenda, came in and laid a fire, stopping for a moment to touch the half-written story I had been working on. She had clearly been crying at some point in the last few hours. I am embarrassed to say how long it took me to realise that I must have been the cause of those tears. I had been so focussed on Holmes that I had not stopped to think that others would be mourning me.

I followed her downstairs to Mrs. Hudson's domain, where that good lady was starting with the business of the day. I could tell she had wept that morning as well.

“I don't suppose there'll be any need to prepare breakfast today,” she said to Brenda. “Mr. Holmes rarely partakes when the Doctor isn't here.” There was a pause as she swallowed down emotion. “I'll pop out in a moment to buy something that might tempt him for lunch,” she said once she had mastered herself. “You get on and scrub the hall floor – I daresay we'll have a fair few visitors over the next few days, and there's no call to let standards slip, even at a time like this.”

Brenda nodded and went to fill a bucket. I stepped back out of her way in order to avoid being walked through. Just because I couldn't feel it didn't mean that I enjoyed the experience. It was unnerving, to say the least.

Mrs. Hudson was correct about the flow of visitors over the next few days. I was surprised, and touched, by the number of people who came by to offer their condolences. Not just the gentlemen I knew well enough from my club or profession to call friends, but also police officers who knew me through Holmes, some of my past patients, and a few of Holmes's clients who had cause to remember me fondly. Holmes received all of them, although he rarely had much to say in response to the polite formalities they voiced.

On the second day, a large delegation of Holmes's Irregulars turned up, clutching their caps in their hands. Holmes greeted them with the same polite front that he had shown all the others, but I could see that he was just as touched as I was by the display.

“He was a good sort,” said the current leader of the gang, Ned. “We're sorry for yer loss.”

“He was the best of sorts,” said Holmes, which was the most I had heard him say about me since I had died. “Thank you.”

One of the other lads, a lanky boy who was likely to end up tall enough to bump his head on doorways, said, “Ain't easy losing a mate. Specially not when its sudden-like.”

I remembered that he had been particularly close to Tommy, a boy who had died last year when his frail lungs gave up. He had suffered from breathing difficulties for as long as I had known him, and I had done my best for him, but what he truly needed was to be taken out of the city, to somewhere with cleaner air. That kind of thing just wasn't an option for a streetboy, unfortunately. Death was all too common amongst the poorest members of our society, cruelly snatching them away from their friends and relations without any mercy.

But then, I had been snatched away in exactly the same manner, even given my more privileged position. Death had no respect for rank.

“No,” agreed Holmes in a heavy voice.

“He looked after us, even though we din't 'ave no money to pay for doctoring,” added another lad. “We jus' wanted you to know that we're sad he's dead.”

Holmes nodded. “It is very kind of you,” he said, with as much dignity as if he was talking to any of the more distinguished gentlemen who had come by. “I know he would have been very touched. Why don't you go downstairs and see if Mrs. Hudson has any biscuits for you?”

They all trooped out and I wondered just how Mrs. Hudson was going to react to such an invasion in her kitchen.

Once they were gone, Holmes let out a long breath and put his hand over his face for a moment. 

I stepped forward and uselessly tried to put my hand on his shoulder, for what would easily have been the hundredth time. I could not stand to see him in such a state, but there was nothing I could do to reach him, let alone ease his pain. I wondered what the purpose in my continued existence on this plane was, if I were only there to watch the suffering of those I cared for while unable to relieve it. It seemed a cruel way to spend the afterlife. I wondered if I should not be attempting to move on to some other place. Where were the plains of paradise that the preachers all spoke of? I may not have been a perfect man, but I liked to think I had done more good than bad over my life. Surely God should have opened his gates to me?

There was no other realm before me, though. There was nothing for me but watching Holmes sit through another long evening alone, staring at the chair where I sat but not seeing me, and doing nothing more than occasionally plucking a string on his violin. He went to bed early, but re-emerged a few hours later, wrapped in his rattiest dressing gown and looking as if he had not slept.

He paced the sitting room, picking things up for a moment or two and then setting them back as if they held no interest. He stopped over my desk, looking at the clutter I had left there for a long time before he reached out one long finger to touch the pen I had been writing with when the apoplexy struck. It still lay where I had dropped it.

“How is one meant to bear this?” he muttered to himself.

I felt as if my heart was seizing in my chest – impossible, given that I had neither heart nor chest any more. I knew exactly how he felt. I had suffered the same after the Reichenbach Falls.

“You just struggle through,” I replied to him, hoping at least some small part of his spirit could hear me, even if his ears could not. “It is hard, but it slowly gets easier. Or, at least, dimmer.”

He brushed his fingers over the lines of my writing, and then stepped back and took a long breath.

“Enough,” he muttered, and retreated back into his bedroom.

****

The next day, he came out very late and then only because his brother, Mycroft, arrived for a visit. Holmes did not bother dressing for the occasion, emerging to greet his brother still wrapped in a dressing gown.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft greeted him as he eased himself down into a chair, looking exhausted by his short journey from Whitehall. He did not looked surprised at Holmes's choice of attire; I suppose that he knew his brother well enough to realise it was not unusual.

“Mycroft,” returned Holmes. He seemed as surprised as I was that Mycroft would have stirred himself enough to break his usual routine, and from the look he gave it, doubly surprised to see the mourning band stretched around Mycroft's arm. “That seems a little over-the-top,” he said. “You must have only met him a handful of times.”

“Indeed,” acknowledged Mycroft. “But you considered him to be your family, and that made him mine also.”

I was initially surprised and then more touched than I had been by any of the accolades I had overheard so far. Mycroft Holmes had formidable powers of observation; if he said Holmes thought of me as family, it was so. 

Holmes's lack of denial emphasised this. He nodded, and looked at the rug as if it contained all the clues to a locked room murder. I saw his throat surge as he swallowed.

I had never considered 'family' as a way to describe the bond between us, perhaps because for me, family had been something that tended to be a source of worry rather than solace. There was certainly a sense of kinship between us, of the brothers-in-arms style. I may have wished for that bond to be more in the manner of spouses but this did not diminish what we had actually had. Certainly Holmes had been closer to me than any member of my family had been since the year after my mother’s death, when my father, brother and I drifted apart without her anchoring presence.

“Well, you are doing better than me, then,” said Holmes. “I don't have a mourning band yet, although Mrs. Hudson has offered to stitch me one several times.” He was silent for a moment and then added in a quieter voice, “I suppose I object to the smallness of it. It feels as if I should be wearing a much fuller mourning for him, and yet that would cause a scandal.”

“Yes, you do so hate to cause a scandal,” said Mycroft. Holmes gave him an unamused look, which Mycroft returned.

“When you were – gone,” continued Mycroft after a short pause, “your doctor wore a mourning band for you for far longer than is customary. It was only the death of his wife, and his mourning for her, that broke him of the habit.”

That was true, although I had not been aware that Mycroft Holmes had known as much. I wondered just how closely he had been keeping an eye on me during those three dreadful years, when my life seemed to be filled with nothing but loss. I had ignored the gentle hints and pointed comments for months after I should have stopped wearing mourning for Holmes, and then Mary had died and it felt as if the whole of my life was swathed in black.

“Well, the funeral is on Tuesday,” said Holmes. “Perhaps I shall get one before then, if I go. I am not yet sure whether I will.”

Mycroft looked as shocked as I felt. “Of course you will go,” he said. “You were his greatest friend.”

“You know I see little point in funerals,” said Holmes. “What sense is there in gathering to discuss someone who is not there to know how much they were appreciated?”

“Oh, what rubbish,” said Mycroft. “Show some intelligence, Sherlock. They are for those left behind to feel as if they have a chance to say goodbye.”

Holmes made a face. “I had my chance to say goodbye,” he said. “I shall not bother with another one, especially not in front of all those endlessly dreary friends of his from his club.”

Mycroft let out a long sigh. “Don't be difficult. I shall be going – I'll come and pick you up on my way. Don't make me have to drag you there.”

Holmes made a face, but reluctantly nodded. “If I must.”

“That is arranged, then,” said Mycroft. “And I shall bring a mourning band for you.” He slowly pulled himself to his feet, and Holmes rose as well. “I shall leave you now, then. I have been away from the office for quite long enough.”

He left. Holmes sank back into his chair with a sigh. He was clearly not relishing the thought of my funeral, but I was glad Mycroft had talked him in to attending. Holmes had been the most important person in my life for years; I would have been crushed if he was not there at my funeral to see me off.

I wondered if my funeral might mark the moment when I moved on from my current existence as a spirit. I could fathom no reason for why I had not done so already, but perhaps it was not until my body had been committed to the ground that I would move on. 

I was not sure how I felt about the idea. I was sick of this existence in which I could do or say nothing, but I also did not like the idea of leaving Holmes behind. I did not feel I could draw a line under our association and call it complete; too much remained unresolved between us.

****

When Tuesday came, Holmes was in such a dismal mood that I worried he would refuse to go after all.

Mycroft Holmes arrived half an hour before the service began to collect Holmes and Mrs. Hudson. My fears were laid to rest by the extremely accomplished way he bullied Holmes into the carriage, without allowing him any time for protests. Clearly, he had considerable experience with how to handle Holmes when he was in such a mood.

I climbed in after them, just managing to get inside the carriage before the driver shut the door through my incorporeal self. I was then faced with a dilemma. Mycroft Holmes's vast girth took up the entirety of one seat and Holmes and Mrs. Hudson were settled on the one opposite. I would either have to occupy the same space as one of them, or stand awkwardly in the centre of the carriage, crouched to prevent my head passing through the roof. As it was, my legs were intersected by Mrs. Hudson's skirt, which felt rather inappropriate even if she was unaware of it.

In the end, I sat myself through Holmes's lap. I had shared the same space as him before, after all, and it felt strangely intimate to force myself on either Mycroft or Mrs. Hudson. With Holmes, that intimacy seemed almost natural.

I suppose I should clarify here that I had not yet worked out the rules that seemed to bind my existence. Why I passed through people, objects, doors and walls without really noticing, but was able to sit on chairs and walk on floors was beyond my mind to comprehend. I suppose some things, such as the solidity of the ground beneath us, are so ingrained in the mind that they linger even after death.

That ride was the longest I had spent sharing the same space as someone who was alive. Holmes spent it staring blankly out of the window, occasionally tucking a finger under the mourning band that Mycroft had forced on him in an attempt to adjust it. He certainly gave no sign that he felt my presence.

The service itself was almost disappointingly standard. I suppose we all wish to believe that our death will be accompanied by an ecstasy of grief that transcends that which we have seen for others. The truth is that the end of any human life is largely like the end of every other life. Friends and acquaintances voice subdued platitudes that mean very little in real terms and a vicar who knows little of the deceased reads an address that covers the main points of a life but fails to encapsulate what made that person unique. There are a few prayers and a reading or two that has a vague link to the person in question. In my case, Anstruther read out the Hippocratic oath and said a few words about my dedication as a doctor. I found this rather amusing given how often I had abandoned my patients to his care whenever Holmes declared he needed me for a case.

The vicar lingered on my brief time with Mary and expressed a hope that I was reunited with her in heaven. I wondered why I wasn't. She had gone before me by many years, but surely she was still waiting for me, somewhere close ahead that I should be moving towards? I looked at the shuttered expression on Holmes's face as he sat in the front row and knew that I could not abandon him just yet. Not voluntarily at any rate, and there did not seem to be any involuntary pull towards another realm. Indeed, even if I had been firm on wanting to move onwards, I would have had no idea how to do so. The world around me was as immutable as it had been when I was alive.

Holmes did not stay for the wake. I followed him home, grateful that the space in the hansom meant I did not need to occupy the same space as him. He stared out at the streets with a heart-breaking expression on his face. An expression I knew he would not have worn if he had thought another could see it.

“It is alright, Holmes,” I said. “I am still with you.”

It provided neither of us with any comfort.

****

Several days passed, during which time Holmes sank into one of the depressions that I recognised from periods when there were no cases worthy of his mind. Mrs. Hudson tutted over his lack of interest in food, as well as his tendency to spend entire days in his dressing gown, doing nothing but smoking until the sitting room was filled with a haze. I was glad that I no longer had any need to breathe. Mrs. Hudson was ignored in the same manner that anyone was who tried to ameliorate Holmes’s condition when he was in such a mood.

I spent the time attempting to grip the pen that I had held in the final moments of my life. No matter how loudly I shouted, I could not be heard, but if I could just summon the strength to hold a pen, using whatever the means were by which I was able to have contact with floors and chairs, then I could at least write to Holmes.

I succeeded only in frustrating myself. My hand passed right through the object time after time, no matter how I concentrated or tried to convince myself that my hand was yet as solid as the carpet below. It was possibly the most demoralising experience I have ever had, including trying to keep our sitting room free of scattered paperwork, or attempting to keep up with the flow of wounded men at the Battle of Maiwand. I was forced to give up, although I indulged in a fit of swearing that would have amused Holmes and shocked Mrs. Hudson if they had been able to hear a word.

It was on the fifth day after my funeral that a client came to visit, which caused me enormous relief. Holmes needed something other than my demise to think about, and a case always improved his mood. Besides which, I was rapidly becoming bored of the inside of our sitting rooms, especially now I could not pick up a book to read it or do any activity other than watch Holmes descend further into his black mood.

Holmes welcomed Mr. James M. Dodd in, then sat him in the chair opposite the window, where the light would fall full upon his face. Holmes sat back in his own chair, and waited for Mr. Dodd to begin. There was a silence and I realised that this was the point where I would usually have prompted the client to start with an enquiry or question. Holmes did not seem prepared to take that role himself.

When Dodd finally did speak, it was not of his case. “I was sorry to hear of the death of Doctor Watson,” he said, his eyes flicking to the mourning band that Holmes had continued to wear after my funeral.

Holmes stiffened. “Thank you,” he said in a voice that did not invite Dodd to continue.

“I greatly enjoyed his stories,” Dodd went on, apparently unaware of how unwelcome his words were. “He seemed a good man.”

“He was,” acknowledged Holmes then, when it seemed Dodd might add more on the subject, interjected sharply with, “You are from South Africa, sir, I perceive.”

Dodd reacted with the same surprise as all who had not seen Holmes's powers before, especially when Holmes went on to deduce the precise Corps he had served with.

_You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,_ I thought to myself, and smiled. I had little known when I heard those words just how important the man speaking them would become to me.

“You see everything,” exclaimed Dodd when Holmes had laid out the observations that had led to his deduction.

“I see no more than you, but I have trained myself to notice what I see. However, Mr. Dodd, it was not to discuss the science of observation that you called upon me this morning. What has been happening at Tuxbury Old Park?”

A great deal had been happening at Tuxbury Old Park, if the client was to be believed. I found myself just as drawn into his tale as I ever had been into one of Holmes's cases when I was alive. The mysterious disappearance of his friend, Godfrey Emsworth, after his return from South Africa, Mr. Dodd’s treatment at the hands of Emsworth's martinet father when he had attempted to investigate, not to mention the strange, midnight visitation of Dodd's friend all added up to an intriguing tale that I could see was rousing Holmes’s interest just as much as mine. I found myself exclaiming once or twice and even asking the occasional question that went unheard. It was hard to remember that I was no longer part of the familiar scene; as far as the other two men were concerned, they were alone.

“The matter should certainly be enquired into,” said Holmes once all the facts had been laid before him. “I will go back with you to Tuxbury Old Park.”

“Today?” asked Dodd.

Holmes hesitated and his eyes flicked to the empty chair at my desk. He shook his head.

“I am afraid that I am engaged with one or two matters of extreme import, which cannot be left just yet,” he said. “I shall contact you when I know which day I shall be free on, but rest assured, it will be soon enough to help your friend and uncover this matter.”

“I shall await your word, then,” said Dodd, standing and holding his hand out to Holmes. “Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Holmes. It is greatly appreciated.”

Holmes shook his hand and Dodd left. 

Holmes slumped back down in his chair and for a while seemed disinclined to move. I wondered if he was turning the problem over in his head, or if the ennui that my death had caused still clung to him, despite the advent of an interesting case, something that had previously been guaranteed to sweep away any such mood.

Mrs. Hudson's daily visit to persuade Holmes to have dinner finally broke his reverie.

“No, no, no food,” he said, and then leapt to his feet. “I shall need you to send a telegram for me, however.”

He pulled a telegram form towards himself and scrawled something down.

Mrs. Hudson sighed. “Now, Mr. Holmes, this can't go on. You need to eat something. How about I just bring up something small? Cold meats, perhaps, or maybe some soup?”

“You may bring what you like, I shall not eat it,” said Holmes, finishing off the form and then holding it out to her.

She didn't take it immediately but instead fixed a knowing look at him. “If Doctor Watson were here-”

“He is not,” said Holmes, “and so his probable opinion on the matter has no relevance.”

I glared at him. “You should listen to her, Holmes.”

Mrs. Hudson spoke over my words before I wasted air on others. Or whatever spiritual facsimile of air powered the voice that only I could hear now.

“Mr. Holmes. There are others who wish to see you well. Refusing food is only going to cause us all worry. For my sake at least, please take a little something.”

Holmes stared at her for a long moment and then let out an impatient sigh. “I suppose some soup wouldn't be too much,” he said. “Just see that this telegram is delivered!”

“Of course, sir,” she said, taking it from him. “I'll see the boy takes it immediately.”

She left and Holmes lit his pipe before sinking back into his chair, glaring at the fire.

“She is right,” I said. “You need to take better care of yourself, Holmes.” 

There was no response. 

I sank into my own chair despondently. I had never been able to have a great deal of influence over Holmes's erratic eating habits, but I had occasionally had some.

“You know what I would say if you could hear me,” I said to Holmes's oblivious face. “Why can you not heed it?”

He breathed out a cloud of smoke and continued to stare at nothing.

To know my words meant less than the clouds of smoke he blew out now, that the wind against the windows had more impact on Holmes than I, felt as if something precious had been broken.

****

The next morning, Holmes received a reply to his telegram, but I was not swift enough to read it over his shoulder. He nodded with satisfaction, ate a scrap or two of breakfast, and then put on his hat and coat to leave the house.

I must confess that I was greatly heartened by the display. I hoped it meant that he was fitting himself back into the routines of his life, and that my death would no longer hang over him in quite the same, immediate way. Perhaps he had, at least on some level, heard my words of the previous night.

I followed him out of the house and into a cab, which he directed to an address that I realised with surprise belonged to Sir James Saunders, a respected member of my own profession who specialised in dermatological conditions. Holmes and I had met him a year or two before, when Holmes had managed to demonstrate that the death of Saunders' mother-in-law had been of natural causes and not, as the police had thought, murder.

Saunders was a quiet, serious man who dressed cheerlessly. I had found him an interesting conversationalist when we had encountered each other on a handful of other occasions after the case had been concluded. Holmes, as far as I knew, had not seen him since the conclusion of the case. 

So what reason could Holmes have to visit the man now? Did he have some sort of skin complaint that he had hidden away from me?

When we arrived at the residence, it was obvious Holmes was expected. He was shown into a study. I followed close behind, trying to avoid walking through any furniture littering the halls. Sir James joined us after only a minute or so.

“Mr. Holmes,” he said, holding out his hand. “I was saddened to hear about Doctor Watson.”

Holmes shook his hand. “Thank you,” he said, rather shortly. “I am actually here on another matter. I may need your assistance with a case.”

“I am more than happy to help, if I can,” said Sir James, waving Holmes into a chair. “I owe you a considerable debt for the deft way you kept my brother-in-law from the gallows.”

“Then allow me to explain the circumstances,” said Holmes, and he launched into the tale that Mr. James Dodd had told him.

I was more than surprised, I must confess. I had listened to the story as intently as Holmes had, and I could see no use for a dermatologist, nor any other way in which Sir James might be able to assist Holmes. Still, I cannot count the number of times I have had no idea why Holmes is following a particular investigative course, only to be surprised by how obvious it should have seemed when everything was finally explained.

Tea was brought whilst Holmes spoke and I watched him take a cup apparently without noticing he was doing so. I must confess that I wished, rather strongly, that I might be able to take one as well. I had rather had my fill of watching others eat and drink, and yet being unable to do so myself.

When Holmes had finished the story, he sat back with an air of expectation.

“It's a fascinating tale,” said Sir James after a moment or two of silence had passed. “But I must confess that I do not see where my assistance might come in.”

“Do you not?” said Holmes. “Well, consider. A young man is being kept in seclusion by his family, and there is a great deal of secrecy surrounding the whole affair. He has a keeper of some sort, and has changed in appearance so as to become unhealthily pale. He was last known to be in good health and spirits in South Africa, where several diseases are far more widespread than they are in this country.”

“Ah,” said Sir James, at roughly the same time as I caught what Holmes might be driving at. “You think the lad contracted leprosy.”

“It is a possibility,” said Holmes. “A rather strong one, but there are still two or three other theories I am considering. That is why I wished to consult you on it.”

Sir James was silent for a long while as he considered the facts. “It is plausible,” he said eventually. “Although I would have to see the man myself to be sure. There are other conditions that bleach the skin in the same way, most of them less serious than leprosy. Did Mr. Dodd describe any other alterations to his appearance?”

Holmes shook his head. “You now know as much as I do about it,” he said. “I intend to go to Tuxbury Old Park with Dodd in order to confront Colonel Emsworth and get to the heart of the matter. Could I possibly persuade you to accompany us?”

“Of course,” said Sir James. “It would be a pleasure to help you in your work, Mr. Holmes.”

“And if it should turn out to be leprosy?”

“I shall be the soul of discretion,” promised Sir James. “It is clear that the family wish to keep it quiet, and I will not go against that wish. You may consider my assistance to be that of a friend rather than a medical professional.”

“That is extremely kind of you,” said Holmes.

“I could do no less for you,” said Sir James. “Even if you had not helped Robert as you did, I would feel I owed you that on the account of Doctor Watson. He was a good man, and I know that you were his greatest friend. For his sake, I will offer you the same measure of friendship that I would give him, were he here to seek it.”

Holmes's response to that was a very stiff nod. He did not attempt words and Sir James did not seem to expect them. Instead, they finished their tea and arranged to go to Tuxbury Old Park at the beginning of the next week, which was the earliest that Sir James could manage.

Holmes left not long after that and I followed him again. I was beginning to truly feel a spirit now that I merely trailed along behind Holmes, haunting his every move and watching conversations that I would not have normally been part of. When Holmes had been holed up in our rooms, it had been much easier to pretend that he was just in a mood and that soon things would return to normal. Trying to avoid being walked through by the bustle that fills London while watching Holmes conduct the part of an investigation that I was generally not privy to made it all too clear that I was now nothing more than a shadow.

We returned to Baker Street and Holmes shut himself in our rooms again, throwing on an old dressing gown and curling up in his seat with a pipe.

I settled in my own chair, stretching my legs out in front of me. “How is it that you are comfortable all knotted up like that?” I asked him. “It was only just believable when you were a young man but now you are getting on in years surely it makes you ache?”

It was a thought I had often had over the years, but kept quiet about. Now that there was no hope of Holmes hearing me, there seemed little point in keeping the words internal any longer. It did not matter. I could have said anything I liked. Holmes just puffed away at his pipe and then eventually reached for a newspaper.

I huffed out a sigh. There is very little that is interesting about watching another person read a newspaper, even a person as dear to you as Holmes is to me. All things considered, I was swiftly reaching a level of boredom that I had not believed possible. It did not look as if he intended to do anything truly interesting with the rest of his day; after that would come the endless night, when he would retreat to his room to sleep, and I would be left with nothing to do but look around at the many books and periodicals we had filled our rooms with over the years, and which I was now incapable of touching.

It was too much. I pulled myself to my feet with resolution and set off out of our rooms, through the shut door and down the stairs. I hesitated at the door to the kitchen, but I could hear nothing of interest from within and so turned to the front door instead and set out into the street.

I did not know where to go, so I went to where I had sought a distraction in life. I went first to my club, where several of my friends were eating lunch together. I listened to their conversation for a time, hearing that Gilbert's sister had had her baby without any complications, and that Harding was still talking about moving from his current lodgings to a nicer area, as if we didn't all know that he could not afford such a thing without giving up his gambling habit. 

Listening to actual conversation, even one I could not join in with, was far more interesting than watching Holmes sit alone in silence, but I still found myself missing him far more than I ever had in life. It felt almost like a pain, lodged in the middle of my chest and gently tugging, as if seeking to pull me back to him. I resolutely ignored it.

When my friends finished their meal and went their separate ways, I wandered the streets again for a while, until I found myself outside Scotland Yard. I went inside, trying to follow closely enough on the heels of a constable that I could pass while the door was open, but I misjudged it and ended up with the door closing through me.

Inside, all was the usual bustle and I settled in to watch as crimes were discussed, disreputable persons were interrogated, and reports were written. Most of the crimes dealt with at the Yard were little more than petty, sordid tales, not nearly as interesting as those Holmes took on. Still, watching the force go about their usual business, unhampered by an impatient genius, made me appreciate just how good they were at their jobs, despite all Holmes had to say about it.

Inspector Lestrade passed by me and went into his office, and I followed behind. He set down what looked to be a pile of witness statements with a sigh and then settled into his chair to read them. A moment later, there was a knock on the door and he looked up as if reprieved from a harsh punishment.

“Come in!” he called, and Inspector Gregson came inside.

“Good afternoon,” he said.

“It would be a better afternoon without all this paperwork,” grumbled Lestrade. “I don't suppose I could persuade you to do it for me?”

Gregson shook his head. “I have my own stack waiting for me, I'm afraid,” he said. “I just came to ask if you had anything more on the Timmerson brothers.”

Lestrade shook his head. “I'm afraid they have vanished as if they never were. My informer down at the docks said he heard they might be heading out abroad, but he's not got anything on the precise where or when.”

Gregson shook his head. “Funny how informers never seem to,” he said. “Well, I suppose we shall have to consider them flown.” He hesitated, then said, in a quieter voice. “Heard anything from Holmes?”

Lestrade pressed his lips together. “No,” he admitted. “Not since the funeral.”

“I have had at least one or two cases that he would usually insist on sticking his beak of a nose into,” said Gregson. “And yet, nothing. You are probably the closest one to him, I would have thought that if anyone would have heard from him, it would be you.”

“He's taken it hard,” said Lestrade. “Well, it is hard not to, when it is a friend you are that close to. And it is not as if he has a surplus of friends to take the Doctor's place.”

“No,” agreed Gregson. “I always wondered that he had that one, given his manners. And the Doctor was such a kind, friendly sort of a man. It was always a bit of a puzzle.”

I puffed up with indignation. Holmes was an excellent man to spend time with, when he wasn't closed off in one of his moods. He was an intelligent and witty conversationalist on a number of topics, and although his genius meant that he tended to dominate a discussion, he was not afraid to let a fellow have his say, or debate with him when his opinion differed.

“Was it?” asked Lestrade in a sharp manner that made me think he held the same opinion as me. “It seemed rather simple to me.”

There was a brief moment of awkward stand-off, and then Gregson gave in with a nod. “Well, I never spent as much time with the two as you did.”

“No,” said Lestrade. “Perhaps if you had, you would not be wondering why Holmes might be keeping quiet for a week or two following the death of his closest friend and companion.”

Gregson acknowledged that and then retreated with his tail between his legs. I favoured Lestrade with a grateful smile that he could not see.

Suddenly, I wished to return to Holmes's side more than anything. The pain in my chest tugged at me and I resolved to head home at once. Watching Holmes read might be dull, but at least I would be with him.

I took a step towards the door, intending to leave the building and walk back to Baker Street, but instead there was a rush of darkness and I found myself back in the sitting room of 221B, right beside Holmes himself.

The surprise caused me to start backwards, which was all that prevented Holmes from passing through me as he took a step to one side. He was playing his violin, swaying slightly with the force of the music, and I was immediately grateful that I had returned now. I settled into my usual chair to watch him, as enraptured as I ever had been in life.

His playing had never failed to impress me, when he did it properly rather than just plucked out random notes. When I had been alive, I had worked hard not to betray my feelings for him in my posture or expression. Now there was no need for such a pretence.

The tune he was playing was filled with melancholy and longing, and I felt all my pain at our separation rise in my throat.

When he finally finished, he set down his violin with his usual care before slumping onto the sofa, draping one arm over his eyes.

“I am still here, Holmes,” I said, uselessly. It did not matter if I was there or not. He could neither see nor hear me, and so I might as well be in Scotland Yard still, or in my club, or on the other side of the world. Or, indeed, beyond this life entirely, on another plane of existence as I had been taught to expect.

“Holmes,” I said again, and then moved to crouch at his side. “I would that I could take some of this pain from you.”

I could not, though. 

All I could do was watch him suffer.

****

Over the next few days, I tested the new ability I had discovered in Lestrade's office. It seemed I could move to Holmes's side in an instant, no matter where he was, or where I was. All I had to do was will it and take a step. It did not work for anyone else, however. No matter how I focused on any of my other friends, I was unable to move instantly to them in such a way. Combined with the pain in my chest that came about whenever I moved too far or was too long away from Holmes's side, that led me to the conclusion that I was now haunting him.

It was not a comfortable thought, although I supposed that if I were to haunt anyone, it would be him. I was just not sure what I was meant to accomplish by being tied to his side. If he could not sense me, what was the purpose?

Mr. Dodd came by on Monday morning to go with Holmes to Tuxbury Old Park and I climbed into the carriage after them. Holmes directed the carriage to pick up Sir James along the way, but did not deign to introduce him properly to Dodd once they had done so.

“This is an old friend,” was all he said. “It is possible that his presence will be entirely unnecessary, and, on the other hand, it may be essential. It is not necessary at the present stage to go further into the matter.”

Dodd raised his eyebrows but Holmes did not bother enlightening him further, and I let out a chuckle at Dodd's consternation. I was well-used to playing his role in an investigation and being kept in the dark until the very last moment. It was rather nice to be on the inside this time, to know the big reveal that Holmes was planning.

That said, I could not help thinking that it might be easier for Dodd if he knew in advance that it was possible his friend was afflicted with leprosy. It would not be a pleasant surprise.

On the train, Holmes asked Dodd one or two more questions about Godfrey Emsworth's appearance, presumably for the benefit of Sir James, who gave Holmes a small nod when he was satisfied, and then the three of them settled into silence for the rest of the trip to Tuxbury Old Park. I sat on the seat beside Holmes and hoped that no one living would need to use it before our destination.

I was lucky to be the sole occupant of the seat for that part of the journey, but when we changed to a carriage that Holmes had hired for the day, it became necessary for me to sit with at least half my body in the same space as Sir James, or instead sit in Holmes's lap. I am afraid that I was unable to resist the temptation to sit with my friend in that manner again. I had longed to be as close to him in life and always been denied the chance. Even if there was little or no physical sensation involved in such an act, it still pleased a part of me to be in such a position.

Writing it down, it makes it sound as if I was taking unwarranted liberties with his person. I suppose I was in some ways, but it was not as if he had any inkling of it. Does that make my behaviour excusable, or twice as repellent?

When we arrived at Tuxbury Old Park, Holmes bade Sir James to remain in the carriage unless summoned, and then he and Dodd knocked firmly on the door while I hovered behind them.

The butler, Ralph, opened the door wearing an odd pair of brown leather gloves that he immediately removed and deposited on the hall-table. I have no doubt that I would not have noticed this detail if Holmes hadn't knocked them off as he placed his hat beside them, and then bent over to pick them up. I must admit at this point to rather enjoying the opportunity to appreciate one of the finer parts of my friend's figure without fear that I would be observed by the others in the room. I suppose that was an unwarranted liberty as well.

Colonel Emsworth was not pleased to see his visitors. He rushed into the room that Ralph had asked Holmes and Dodd to wait in, ripped up their cards and stamped on the fragments, then rounded on poor Dodd, who looked rather petrified by the spectacle.

“Have I not told you, you infernal busybody, that you are warned off the premises? Never dare show your damned face here again. If you enter again without my leave I shall be within my rights if I use violence, I'll shoot you, sir! By God, I will! As to you, sir,” he said, turning on Holmes, who maintained his usual calm air in the face of such fury, “I extend the same warning to you. I am familiar with your ignoble profession, but you must take your reputed talents to some other field. There is no opening for them here.”

Dodd gathered his courage. “I cannot leave here until I hear from Godfrey's own lips that he is under no restraint.” 

The look on Colonel Emsworth's face was such that I must confess I was worried that I was about to watch Holmes be murdered in front of me while I could do nothing to prevent it. Instead, the Colonel rang the bell with such force that the bell-pull almost tugged free from its setting. When Ralph arrived, the Colonel commanded him to summon the police and tell them there were burglars in the house.

Holmes finally stepped in at that moment. “One moment,” he said. “You must be aware, Mr. Dodd, that Colonel Emsworth is within his rights and that we have no legal status within his house. On the other hand, he should recognise that your action is prompted entirely by solicitude for his son. I venture to hope that, if I were allowed five minutes' conversation with Colonel Emsworth, I could certainly alter his view of the matter.”

His speech had little or no effect on Colonel Emsworth. “I am not so easily altered. Ralph, do what I have told you. What the devil are you waiting for? Ring up the police!”

Poor Ralph looked as if he did not know what to do. I think he was just as afraid that the scene would end with violence as I was. Holmes set his back to the door, preventing Ralph from leaving and finding the telephone. Ralph cast an anxious look at his master, who had gone very red in the face.

“Nothing of the sort,” said Holmes. “Any police interference would bring about that very catastrophe that you dread.” He took out his notebook and wrote a word on a page, then showed it to Colonel Emsworth. “That is what has brought us here.” I darted around to catch sight of the word and was not surprised to see that he had written down 'Leprosy'. It seemed that he had seen enough to decide his theory was fact.

Colonel Emsworth collapsed into his chair as he read the paper. “How did you know?” he asked.

“It is my business to know things,” said Holmes with his usual over-bearing arrogance. “It is my trade.”

Colonel Emsworth gave in easily enough after that and we all trooped out into the garden to visit the small house that stood in the grounds.

In the course of Holmes's cases, I have seen a great many people reunited with loved ones, but I do not think I have ever seen a reaction as strong as Dodd's when he saw Godfrey Emsworth. His whole face lit up with joy and relief surged through him so completely that I realised he must have been far more racked with worry than I had realised. He sprang forward to shake his friend's hand with such eagerness that I thought he would sweep him up in his arms instead.

A moment later, when his friend had turned around and stepped back so as to avoid touching him, all that happiness fell from his face in shock. Godfrey Emsworth with covered with mottled white patches that, as a medical man, I instantly recognised as one of the symptoms of leprosy.

“Don't touch me, Jimmie, keep your distance. Yes, you might well stare! I don't quite look the same smart Lance-Corporal Emsworth, of B Squadron, do I?”

He explained his story while Dodd did his best not to stare in horror. He had been shot during an ambush, and got lost in the aftermath. Whilst looking for a place to spend the night, he had stumbled across a Leper Hospital and fallen into one of the beds there without realising where he was, or the danger he was in. It was a horrible tale to hear, given the place of random chance in bringing him to such a fate, and I could see that the further he went, the more shocked Dodd was.

He was unable to utter a single word when the story was done and Holmes stepped into the pause to offer the services of Sir James, which was gratefully accepted by Mr. Kent, the surgeon that the Emsworth's had hired to care for their son. 

The rest of the party retired to Colonel Emsworth's study, where we were joined by Mrs. Emsworth, who sat in the corner and played with her handkerchief, her mind clearly on the examination her son was undergoing rather than her guests. Indeed, no one had much to say, and so Holmes filled the silence with an explanation of how he had come to realise the reason for Godfrey's seclusion. 

Sadly, none of the group paid him much attention. When he reached his conclusion, he looked around for reactions, and received none. Dodd was still in shock – he had yet to utter a word since his friend's revelation – and Colonel Emsworth was not interested in how Holmes had deduced the secret, only that he had, and so had destroyed the veil of secrecy that he had put in place. Mr. Kent was obviously as distracted by the examination that was taking place in the small house in the garden as Mrs. Emsworth was. As a fellow medical man, I could sympathise with the feelings that are associated with another, more experienced doctor looking over your patient. I imagine he was running his mind through all he had done for Godfrey's treatment and hoping he had taken the right actions.

I had, of course, already guessed much of Holmes’s train of thought from his visit to Sir James, but I was still amazed by the clarity and speed with which he had made his deduction, and the small details he had picked up that led to it. I wished then, more than anything, that I could fill the silence in order to give my friend the reaction he was clearly expecting.

When Sir James returned to the study, he looked grave. “I am afraid it is definitely leprosy,” he said. Mrs. Emsworth let out a quiet noise and the Colonel crossed the room to put his hand on her shoulder. 

“A bad case, as well. I will confer with Mr. Kent on his treatment, but I do not think there is much more that can be done for him. I am sorry.” Sir James looked at Mr. Dodd. “He asked if you would spare a minute to talk to him.”

“Of course,” said Dodd, standing. He slipped out of the room as Sir James and Mr. Kent began a discussion on the best course of treatment, occasionally interrupted by Colonel Emsworth's demands for explanation of some medical term or another. Holmes faded silently into the background, apparently content to just wait out the situation until he was able to leave. My curiosity debated with my conscience for a moment and then I followed after Dodd. He and Godfrey Emsworth probably wished for privacy for their discussion, but I could not imagine them minding a dead man overhearing. It was not as if I had the power to pass on anything they said.

Dodd stood outside the door of the cottage for a few seconds, clearly stealing himself, and then he knocked and entered without waiting for a response.

“Jimmie,” said Godfrey, with a smile that did not quite touch his eyes. “I suppose you've heard Sir James's verdict.”

“Yes,” said Dodd. “Godfrey, I am so sorry. It is a terrible thing.”

“Can you see now why I kept it hidden from you?” asked Godfrey. “I could not bear you knowing.”

Dodd shook his head. “Part of me understands that, but another, larger part wishes I could have been here to help you with this. You do not need to be so alone with this, Godfrey. Indeed, you will not be from now on. I will-”

“No,” interrupted Godfrey. “No, Jimmie, this must be it. After today, you must leave this place and never come back. I could not stand to have you see me die like this.”

“Godfrey,” said Dodd, taking a step towards him that Godfrey mirrored with a backwards one, maintaining their distance. “Please. I want to help you.”

“This is how you can help me,” said Godfrey. “Forget you know this. It would be better if I had died the day that I was shot, rather than this slow, horrible end, and that is how I would prefer you to remember me. Forget you ever came here and heard this part of my tale, please, Jimmie.”

“How can I just abandon you?” asked Dodd. “Godfrey, you are the closest friend I have ever had. How can I just walk away and leave you like this?”

“Because I have asked you to,” said Godfrey. “Take it as my last wish, if you will. Just please, Jimmie. Remember me as I was, not as you see me now.”

Dodd looked troubled, but he nodded his agreement. “If you insist,” he said. “I will go from here and never again contact you. That does not mean I will forget you though. I have treasured our friendship, and I will always remember it, Godfrey.”

“Yes,” said Godfrey, and his voice quavered with emotion. “I cannot wholly regret that you brought your detective here and found me out, as it gives me the chance to say those things to you that men do not say unless they know the end is near. Jimmie, you must know that you have been just as important to me, if not more so. I could not have asked for a better person to stand at my side through the war, and I had hoped we should stay at each other's sides in peace as well. It is my most bitter regret that that will never be.”

I could not help but think of Holmes and how we had stood at each other's side through so many long years and, indeed, how I still stood there, even if he was not aware of it. Hearing Godfrey's last words to his friend brought home once again just how much I wished I had been able to do the same. It seemed so unfair that I had been unable to express to Holmes just how important he was to me. I was filled with the desire to be with him, the image of his face fluttering in front of my eyes as clearly as the room I stood in.

There was a split second of nothing and I found myself back in Colonel Emsworth's study, besides my friend. I had not even had to take a step to be there – my longing for him alone had brought me to him. And yet, it was not satisfied. What use was there in standing with him if he did not know I was there? What was the purpose in following along behind his every move if I could not tell him how clever his actions were, or how deeply I admired him?

It hurt. I reached out for Holmes and watched as yet again my hand passed through his shoulder. “Holmes,” I said, but I had not even completed the word before he was speaking, cutting through the ghost of my voice without any comprehension of it.

“Sir James, if you have finished your discussion with Mr. Kent, might I suggest we make ready to leave? Otherwise we risk missing the train back to London.”

****

When we had arrived back at Baker Street, Holmes threw himself into his chair and I settled in mine. He lit a pipe and smoked it restlessly, standing several times and pacing across the room. Mrs. Hudson brought up dinner and he managed to eat the bare minimum, then pushed the plate aside and resumed pacing. It was a great departure from his usual behaviour in the wake of a successful case, which tended to be more along the lines of self-congratulatory indulgence. I had often watched him consume, in one sitting, nearly twice as much as he had consumed whilst working a case, all while holding forth on one of the many topics on which he was an expert, and generally exuding ample good cheer for me to share.

His mood that night was far more agitated, as if there were some part of the case not yet wrapped up, but we had uncovered the entire truth. As sad as it was, there was nothing he could now do for either Godfrey Emsworth or James Dodd.

I found myself standing by my desk, looking at the half-written pages that Holmes had still not tidied away. Indeed, he had not touched any of my belongings, but left them scattered throughout our rooms as if I would still be able to use them.

I could not help thinking that if I were still alive and had accompanied Holmes as his colleague rather than as an unseen spirit, I would have sat down this evening to write down at least a rough sketch of the case. Over the years, writing had become the way I processed my emotions after a case like this, one where the details we had discovered only served to bring sadness.

I suppose it still holds that purpose for me, or else why would I be writing this account now?

I reached out for my pen and watched as my hand passed through it with an air of resignation. A moment later, another hand reached for it and picked it up, and I started back. I had not realised, as I stood in a reverie, that Holmes had come to stand in the same space as I, and copied my motions.

He held the pen for a moment, regarding it intently, and then abruptly moved to his own desk, clearing aside the pile of paperwork that was scattered across it and pulling a fresh sheet of paper towards himself.

I stood close behind him in order to watch what he wrote.

_The ideas of my friend Watson, although limited, are exceedingly pertinacious. For a long time, he worried me to write an experience of my own._

I started with surprise. It was true that I had repeatedly told him to try writing a case up himself, partly to get him to stop his endless hole-picking of my own narratives, and partly because I was curious to see what a case looked like when viewed through his eyes. I had never truly believed he would ever do such a thing, however.

He paused his pen above the paper.

_Now that he is_ , he started, and then stopped, stared at the words, and abruptly crossed them out. He looked at the page without moving for a long while and I was half afraid that he would give up on the impulse that had led him to start the exercise.

Instead, he returned to the second sentence he had written, and changed the tense so that it read _For a long time, he has worried me to write an experience of his own,_ as if I were still alive to be continuing the many conversations we had had on the topic. He then carried on to give a rough sketch of how such conversations usually went and then acknowledged that, having sat down to write his own account, he realised that he needed to do more than just present the facts, but must make them attractive to the reader.

I must confess, at that point I wished a thousand times that I could make him hear me as I exclaimed, “I told you so!”

He hesitated again, before writing:

_Speaking of my old friend and biographer, I would take this opportunity to remark that if I burden myself with a companion in my various little enquiries it is not done out of sentiment or caprice, but it is that Watson has some remarkable characteristics of his own to which in his modesty he has given little attention amid his exaggerated estimates of my own performances._

To say that I was touched would be an understatement. I was so struck with emotion at that simple sentence, which said more than I think Holmes had ever put into words as to why he had allowed me to become a part of his work. Even his next sentence, which was one of his backhanded compliments that insulted almost as much as they praised, didn’t halt the flood of emotion caused by the acknowledgement of what I had been to him.

_A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate._

He introduced the character of Mr. James M. Dodd before pausing again, his pen hovering above the page. I leant close over his shoulder, wondering what was to come next.

_The good Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife, the only selfish action which I can recall in our association. I was alone._

He continued on with the case, detailing the visit of Mr. Dodd. I barely read it, reeling from that sentence. Did he mean, then, to write the whole event as if I was still alive, just happily elsewhere with a wife? What on earth did that mean? Holmes was a strict believer in the value of truth – indeed, the charge he most often levelled at my own versions of his cases was that I had bent the facts to suit my purposes as a storyteller. Why, then, had he chosen to change such an enormous fact in his own attempt?

He wrote steadily for several hours while I hovered over his desk, watching as he laid out Dodd's tale in detail. I noted that he referred to me far more often than one would expect a man to refer to a friend who was not actually present for any of the action. It seemed he could scarcely go a page without finding some excuse to include my name in his story, tracing out the W with a slower, more elegant hand than the hurried scrawl that the rest of the work was completed in.

When he had reached the denouement and there was nothing left to write but the train of deductions through which he had solved the case, he paused again and stared up into the air for a moment before writing, in a faintly unsteady hand:

_And here it is I miss my Watson. By cunning questions and ejaculations of wonder he could elevate my simple art, which is but systematised common sense, into a prodigy._

I remembered the largely uninterested reaction that had greeted his explanation in Colonel Emsworth's study and then wondered what I might have said to him if I had heard it without already being aware of some of his conclusions from his visit to Sir James. I likely would have ejaculated in wonder, although I cannot say that my questions would have been particularly cunning. Still, it would have given him the audience which he had long come to expect for his intelligence.

He wrote out his deductions in a quick, easy flow, and then ground to a halt again. This time the pause lasted a lot longer, although he did start a sentence once or twice, only to angrily cross it out before he had managed more than a few words.

Eventually, he rose to light a cigarette, and then settled back down and stared at the paper for a long time.

“Damn it, how do you finish these things?” he muttered.

“You just stop when you've run out of story,” I said, which would likely have been no help even if he could have heard it.

When he had finished the cigarette, he appeared to have decided on a course. He took up the pen again and wrote of the return of Sir James from his examination of Godfrey Emsworth, but that was the only part of what he wrote that came close to what had truly happened. When he got so far as to write that Sir James had said it was not leprosy, I could not hold in a laugh.

“Who is to be accused of sentiment now, Holmes?” I asked, as he changed the end of the story to one of relief and hope, rather than sadness and eventual grief.

_“A well-marked case of pseudo-leprosy or ichthyosis, a scale-like affection of the skin, unsightly, obstinate, but possibly curable and certainly non-infective.”_

I imagined how such a circumstance would have affected the conversation that I had witnessed between the two close friends. Godfrey would not have asked Dodd to never see him again, or to forget that he still lived. Instead, the men would have had a chance to continue the friendship they had forged in war, into peacetime. I thought of the spark of something more than friendship that I thought I had detected in their eyes as they looked at each other, and about what might have bloomed, if it were only given a chance. Holmes's ending was a far better one, I thought.

He finally threw the pen down and sat back, staring at the sheets of paper that he had filled with writing. He shuffled them together and reread them all, correcting the occasional word or phrasing as he went. When he was done, he let out a long sigh and quietly shook his head before setting them down and standing. He glanced at the clock, and then crossed to his bedroom and disappeared inside.

I read and reread that top sheet many times over the course of the rest of the night, wishing that I could move the pages to read the ones underneath as well. Having Holmes try his hand at what was my sphere in our partnership was a strange thing, not least in that he had managed, on his first attempt, to do as fair a job as I ever had, even accounting for the lies he had woven into the story. 

The more I thought of how he had written that I was still living but had merely married and gone away, the more I understood it. I can still remember now just how difficult I found it to set down in words that Mary had passed away, knowing that it would be read by the entirety of The Strand's readership. Writing the tale of Holmes's own death, which I wholly believed to be true at the time I wrote it, counts among the hardest things I have ever done.

As for the happy ending that he gave the piece, the author in me could see that it was a much neater ending to what would otherwise be a rather depressing tale, but that did not make it any more obvious why Holmes, an upholder of truth in all things, had decided to fictionalise the facts in such a manner.

Without the ability to ask him, I would likely never know for sure. It seemed unlikely he would bother explaining himself to anyone else.

****

The next morning, Holmes came to breakfast properly dressed and ate enough to put a smile on Mrs. Hudson's face. He gathered up the stack of pages he had written and rummaged through my desk to find the completed stories I had put to one side to give to my agent, Mr. Doyle, once I had finished the last one I was working on. He then left the house and hailed a cab, which he directed to Mr. Doyle's address.

It was obvious what his intentions were but somehow I was still surprised when he greeted Mr. Doyle with a handshake, handed him my completed stories, and then drew out his own. It had seemed like such an intimate thing to do last night as he had set down the words, and yet now he was handing them over to be made available for the entire country, should they choose to read it.

“I am afraid that Watson was working on the final story he owes you at the time he was taken ill. As such, there are only five in your hand there. However, I have tried my hand at writing up a case, which I am happy to offer you in order to fill the contract.”

Mr. Doyle's eyes lit up. “Oh, that is not at all necessary,” he said, casting my sheets aside and all but snatching Holmes's story from his grasp. If I had been overly insistent that Holmes should try his hand at writing, then Doyle had been at least twice as bad.

“Not at all,” said Holmes, with an edge of amusement that I suspect only one who knew him as well as I did would have heard. “I found it an interesting exercise.” 

Doyle glanced up from the first page with even more excitement on his face as he clearly imagined a whole series of such stories. 

“Although not one I think I'll be repeating,” added Holmes smoothly.

Doyle looked momentarily disappointed, but then his gaze returned to the one in front of him. “Well, I am sure the readers will be fascinated to read your thought processes,” he said.

Holmes shrugged. “I am not the writer that Watson was,” he said. “I suspect they will find it a little dry in comparison.”

Was that a compliment? I had not thought he considered me a particularly good writer, despite my popular success. As I followed Holmes from Mr. Doyle's offices and leapt up beside him into another cab, I wondered how many other complimentary thoughts about me he had not deigned to share.

Our next stop was Scotland Yard, where Holmes visited Inspector Lestrade and let him know, in a circulatory way, that his immediate period of mourning was over and that he would be happy to assist on cases again. Lestrade immediately involved him in a burglary that had stumped the force, and I watched as Holmes became engrossed in the details of the crime.

As I watched Holmes argue over witness statements with Lestrade, I thought that taking Dodd's case had been good for him. It had been the kick he needed to get back to his regular life. If he was taking cases again, then I really had no need to worry about him. I knew my friend well enough to know that as long as he could dedicate his brain to those kinds of little problems that he loved, he would be reasonably content with his life, whether or not he had me by his side.

I no longer needed to be hovering on the edge of his life, I thought, and yet could not move away from it. I was still on the material plane, rather than moving on to wherever I should be. What could be keeping me in place even as Holmes began to move on?

I contemplated the problem during the hours that Holmes spent at the Yard, solving Lestrade's burglary and then offering some advice to Hopkins over a series of arsons. What was it that would keep a spirit trapped in place? The popular wisdom was that such a thing was caused by either unfinished business or an inability to deal with the circumstances of one's death.

Holmes had just completed the only business of mine that might be called unfinished, by handing my final stories to Mr. Doyle. Beyond that, I could think of nothing. My bills were all paid and my affairs mostly in order, as much as anyone's could be when death was such a sudden thing.

The circumstances of my death were upsetting, but no more so than any other circumstance that led to the end of my life would have been. I had been content in the hours before the apoplexy had hit me, doing something I loved whilst in the company of the person I was closest to. In truth, it is hard to imagine a better set of circumstances.

Remembering the exact events made me recall the desperation of being unable to speak, and the moment when I thought I had felt Holmes kiss me, although I was still not sure if that was merely fantasy on my part. Was that it? My unfinished business – expressing my great affection for Holmes, and my gratitude at the place he had allowed me in his life?

Holmes left the Yard very late and returned straight to Baker Street, with me still ruminating beside him. He managed a little of the cold supper Mrs. Hudson left for him, and then settled down with his pipe and a scientific journal. I watched him from my chair and thought of all the things I would have said if I had known I was leaving him behind for good.

“Holmes,” I said. I should have been used to being ignored by then, but it still hurt that he didn't look up for the article he was focused on. “Holmes, I need you to hear me.”

He didn't give any sign that he could but I continued anyway, hoping that at least some part of him – perhaps the part that had long been able to engage in silent communication with me – would hear my words.

“Holmes, you were the most important person in my life. And, I suppose, as you still are, of my death as well. It was on honour to stand by your side and be your trusted companion.”

He turned a page in the journal.

I was saying nothing that he wouldn't have deduced years ago. I took a deep breath – to what purpose? A dead man has no need of air – and let spill my deepest secret.

“It has been more than that though, Holmes. I have loved you as more than just a friend. I know such a sentiment is against your nature, but you let me in closer than anyone else, and for that I am extremely grateful. I know, too, that you do not consider yourself the kind of man to inspire such emotions in someone else, and I wanted you to know that you were, and you did. I can imagine no other man who could have aroused such a depth of feeling in me. I-”

Holmes put the journal down and I cut myself off. Had he heard me? Was he reacting to my words in some way? He stared at the chair I occupied for a long moment, long enough to make me begin to hope that he had perceived some sign that I was there.

“Holmes,” I begged. “Please say you can hear me. Just say my name.”

He stood in a swift, smooth motion, grabbed his violin, and turned to stand by the window as he started to tune it.

I deflated. He had no idea I was there. Nothing I had said had come close to getting through to him, and I was still just as firmly stuck in that abominable form of limbo as I had been before I laid bare my heart.

He played for quite some time and then returned to his journal for another hour or two before finally going to bed at an extremely late hour. I just sat and watched him, a depressed lethargy sinking my heart . He was never going to be able to hear the words I was desperate to say to him. 

It had been after his return that this emotion had grown in my chest, an all-encompassing affection that I could not remember feeling for anyone else in my life, not even Mary. It went deep, so deep that at times it seemed that it was the bedrock that my whole existence relied on.

And yet, I had said and done nothing. It had seemed far too dangerous a thing to let out into the open, especially considering Holmes's occasional comments on the irrationality and uselessness of such sentiments. Not to mention the _illegal_ nature of the thoughts I occasionally allowed myself late at night, alone in my bedroom. It had seemed best to keep it all to myself, and pray that Holmes's powers of observation could not read such thoughts from my outward appearance.

How much I regretted that as I sat there that night! The burden of my unspoken words felt like a millstone, dragging me down into despair as I contemplated just how miserable my current existence was, and how unlikely it seemed that it would ever change.

****

The next morning brought another client and in the afternoon there was a telegram from Scotland Yard asking for Holmes's assistance. Holmes dived into both cases with all his usual fervour. Over the next few weeks he was kept thoroughly occupied by a whole series of small but intricate cases. I followed along behind him, but I could summon no real interest in any of the puzzles, nor in the fact that I could now follow Holmes on the parts of a case that I used to be excluded from. I felt the pointlessness of my existence crush my spirit; I began to feel like the ghost I was. A pale imitation of the man I had been, with no way to be actively engaged in the life I had enjoyed so much.

My last few stories began to be published in The Strand. Holmes bought a copy of each on the day it came out and added them to the collection I had started making when A Study In Scarlet was published, a good many years before. At some point, Mrs. Hudson began to gently suggest that my bedroom should be cleared and Holmes told her she could clear it all out and dispose of my clothes and other belongings as she wished. 

Very late on the night before the day she and the maids had set aside to do so, Holmes went up there and went through everything with as much thoroughness as if it were a crime scene. He left most of my things where he found them, but retrieved the box containing my medals, as well as a stack of photographs that I had collected over the years. He locked them in a drawer in his desk and then proceeded to ignore them as completely as he did most of the other assorted bric-a-brac that he had collected over the years and then strewn over our living room.

It was not until the third month after my death that I realised just how solitary Holmes's life was without me in it. He had told me once that I was his only friend, but it was not until I had followed him through every hour of his day for months and seen him speak to no-one for any reason other than his profession that I realised just how true that was. He did not even have the kind of casual acquaintance that one picks up at a club, or that one saw for work but still had the occasional conversation about other matters with. He only spoke to people on topics that were necessary for his business and then came home to what he perceived as an empty flat, where he indulged in solitary pursuits such as reading or playing long, melancholy tunes on the violin. He did not even visit his brother, although I had hoped from their conversation immediately after my death that he might take some solace from that direction.

By the time the story that Holmes had written came out in The Strand, he was as much of a ghost as I was. Even his interactions with Mrs. Hudson were kept to the bare minimum.

He bought a copy of The Strand on his way home from a brief visit to Scotland Yard, during which he had tidied up some paperwork for a case that he had solved the day before and skilfully avoided any hint of conversation that was not strictly related to the case from Gregson, who was the detective assigned to the case.

He settled into his chair with a pipe and read the story through. I wondered if he had as much pleasure in seeing his words published in such a prestigious publication as I always had, but from the way he cast the magazine aside when he was done, I suspected not. He then spent several hours staring off into space, so deep in his mind that even if I had been able to make a noise he could hear, I doubt he would have noticed.

I sat and watched him. As the months went by, I found it more and more difficult to spend time away from his side and had less and less desire to do so. If I was to do nothing but haunt the man, then I would do so completely. I wanted only to keep him in my sight at all times; nothing else seemed to have any import any more.

I no longer found it dull to watch him read, or even just sit and think. It is hard to explain, but it felt as if my mind were slowly shutting down without any of the activities or interactions that might have kept it awake. If you have ever been forced to remain in bed for any long period of time, perhaps you will know what I mean. As time passes and becomes meaningless, it becomes easier and easier to settle down into a mindset that watches the world but does not feel part of it. The brain mutes, until there is nothing but a low level of thought and no urge to strive for more. In this state, I could sit and do nothing but watch Holmes for hours without finding it tedious.

Eventually, Holmes picked up the magazine again and flicked back to the start of the story. He reread some of it and then set it aside with a deep, resounding sigh. He stood and found a telegram form in the mess on his desk. I read over his shoulder as he penned a brief note to his brother, announcing his intention to call on him at his club at lunchtime the following day, and then he rang the bell for the boy to take it to be sent.

That aroused my interest. What was it in the story that had prompted it? Had he seen something that he missed at the time? I wondered how Godfrey Emsworth fared, if he even still lived. I had not thought of him once since Holmes had completed the case and I felt a brief surge of guilt, although there was nothing I could have done for him, not even if I had still been alive.

The next day, Holmes set off for his brother's club at the appointed time and I went with him. Mycroft Holmes had reserved a private dining room and ordered what seemed to be three times as much as Holmes ate in an entire week for the meal.

“I have read your story in The Strand,” said Mycroft as Holmes surveyed the spread with some trepidation.

“Ah,” said Holmes, taking up his cutlery and bravely starting in. “Then you know why I am here.”

“Yes,” agreed Mycroft. “You intend to retire.”

I was surprised. Retirement? Holmes had not breathed a word of such a thing that I had heard and I had read nothing in the story to indicate it. But then, I was not a Holmes and did not see all the minute details that they did.

“Indeed,” said Holmes. “I am going to look for a small cottage on the Sussex coast.”

“Near where we holidayed as children,” said Mycroft, with a nod. “You always did enjoy the view from the top of a cliff.”

Holmes gave him a sardonic look. “It is usually better than that from the bottom of a cliff,” he said. “At any rate, I shall be tidying up my affairs over the next month or so.”

Mycroft nodded. “I shall lend you any assistance I can. Are you sure you will not be bored in such a life, though?”

“I have no doubts that I shall find ways to entertain myself,” said Holmes. “I shall get some bee hives, perhaps. And there are a number of topics that I could write monographs on which would greatly benefit students of criminal detection.”

Mycroft nodded, but he did not look convinced, as I was not. Holmes grew frustrated and irritated if only a week passed without a case to occupy his mind. How on earth could he cope with a life that did not include them at all?

Holmes let out a long sigh. “You must realise the truth, Mycroft,” he said. “I cannot continue here without him. There is little joy in solving these puzzles if I cannot share the solution with my biographer, and continuing as I am just serves to highlight the empty place in my life where he should be standing.” The words came slowly and with some difficulty, which is how I knew they were sincere. I was touched and then deeply saddened that my death had affected him so deeply that he felt he needed to give up his life to escape the feeling.

“Yes,” said Mycroft with a sigh. “That much was clear from your story, although I had hoped time would soften the blow.”

Holmes shook his head. “I suspect I will be feeling this blow until I finally follow him.” He took a deep breath and turned his attention back to his food. “At any rate, my mind is made up.”

“Very well,” said Mycroft. “Then I suppose we should toast to your retirement and your new life by the sea.” He raised his glass and Holmes did the same, although neither of them seemed to take any pleasure in it.

There followed a discussion of Holmes's plans that I must confess I did not pay full attention to. I was too busy still reeling from the information that Holmes was still so affected by my death that he was giving up everything that made him who he was. Without his cases, or the surroundings of his beloved London, who would he be? How could my absence be enough to prompt him to give them both up?

****

Holmes put his plans into motion with all his characteristic determination and speed. He visited several areas of the Sussex coast over a long weekend and then bought a cottage on the cliffs near a small village called Fulworth, without bothering to travel down a second time.

He broke the news rather more gently to Mrs. Hudson than I would have feared. After she had expressed her deep sorrow at losing him as a lodger, she announced her intention to sell 221 Baker Street and retire to the country village where her sister lived. The speed with which she decided this made me suspect that she had long decided that she would retire at the same time as Holmes, although I expect she had thought she had a few more years before such an occasion.

Holmes mentioned it to Lestrade and within days it seemed that every member of Scotland Yard knew. There was mass dismay, although Holmes assured them that he would answer any queries they sent him via telegram with as much speed as possible.

Other than that, there were very few people for Holmes to inform. He gave the handful of boys who currently made up his Irregulars a guinea each, a sum that made their eyes nearly start out of their heads, and told them that if they ever needed any assistance or references, he would be more than happy to oblige.

He packed up his belongings himself, showing far more ruthlessness when it came to throwing away things he would no longer need than I have ever seen. That said, the vast majority of what had been my belongings, the ones that had been scattered around our sitting room rather than neatly put away in my room and so escaped Mrs. Hudson’s clear out, made it into the boxes he packed up. I wasn't sure why he felt it so important to take all my books with him, given that I knew he thought most of the fictional works to be sensationalist rubbish and the medical texts were unlikely to be any use to him in his new life.

Finally going through all the scattered stacks of paperwork and other clutter revealed more than a few things that should, by all rights, be in the files at Scotland Yard. Holmes made a stack of them and then took them all over to Lestrade a day or two before his final departure was planned.

Lestrade tutted as he looked the stack over. “Some of this is years old, Mr. Holmes,” he said. “I am sure the boys in the Records Office will be pleased to see it, but you really shouldn't have had it to start with.”

Holmes shrugged. “I felt my need was greater than whatever filing cabinet it would have languished in,” he said. “Certainly you cannot say that I did not put most of it to good use.”

“No indeed,” said Lestrade with a sigh, setting the stack to one side. He looked at Holmes with a serious expression. “I suppose this will be the last of our official business then, although I hope it will not be the last we see of each other. We have been acquaintances long enough to risk having a drink together if you ever find yourself back in town, I should think.”

Holmes looked surprised by that, although he covered it well. “I should think that could be arranged,” he said. “I can't imagine I shall stay completely away from the city.”

Lestrade nodded. “I hope not. I have to say, it won't feel the same city without you in it. I know the others think the same, too. They wanted to organise a sending off party for you, but I managed to talk them out of it.”

Holmes looked absolutely horrified at the notion. “For that, you have my undying thanks,” he said.

Lestrade chuckled. “Thought I might,” he said. “They did ask me to pass on their heartfelt thanks for all you have done over the years, and I would add mine as well. It has been a true honour to work with you, Mr. Holmes.”

Holmes has always been peculiarly susceptible to compliments on his craft, and despite decades of acclaim, it was still possible to make him blush with such words, as he did on this occasion. “Thank you,” he said. “I know I have been rather hard on you over the years, and I must confess that it was not always warranted. You are not as useless as I may have made out.”

Lestrade's eyebrows raised. “I think that's the nicest thing I've heard you say about anyone. Well, anyone other than Doctor Watson, at any rate.”

“Watson earned more than his fair share of insults as well,” said Holmes. “I suppose I am a difficult man to be friends with.”

“I knew you never truly meant them,” I said. That wasn't right, though. He had meant them in the moment he said them, but only in that moment. His temper was fierce, but it rarely lasted longer than an hour or two, unlike mine. I had nursed grudges for weeks over events that Holmes had forgotten about within an afternoon.

“Possibly,” acknowledged Lestrade. “Doctor Watson was a good man, though. He knew to ignore such things.”

Holmes let out a quiet humming sound. “‘A good man’,” he repeated. “I have heard a great many people say that since his passing.”

“It is true,” said Lestrade.

“Oh, of course,” said Holmes. “One of the truest things that could be said about him. It is just – when I die, they will call me a great man rather than a good one. Indeed, I have read the obituaries from the incident with Moriarty – that is precisely what they called me.”

“Well,” said Lestrade, sounding flustered by the turn of conversation, “you are both, but it is the greatness that stands out, I suppose.”

“Watson was both,” corrected Holmes. “His greatness was in his goodness, though, and his inexhaustible patience with a great man who could not manage quite as much goodness. It seems sad that he is not remembered in that way.”

Lestrade was definitely uncomfortable now. “He is remembered with great fondness,” he offered.

“Yes,” said Holmes, then he shook his head and cleared his throat. “I must be going,” he said, standing. “I had forgotten how much work is involved in moving.”

“Yes, you never really know how many belongings you have until you have to pack them all into boxes, do you?” said Lestrade, also standing and holding his hand out to Holmes. “Well, I wish you all the best in your retirement, then.”

“Thank you,” said Holmes, shaking his hand with a far longer grip than was his custom. “Goodbye, Lestrade.”

He left the room and I trailed after him. I was not sure what to make of that conversation. Did he really think I was great? It seemed hard to believe – surely it was obvious to such an intelligent man that I was not on the same level as him, or any of the other great men of our time? The thoughts seemed too much for my mind to process, so I let it die back down to its resting state, merely observing Holmes rather than questioning his comments.

I followed him back to Baker Street and watched his final preparations with only a shadow of the emotions that I would have felt about seeing our rooms emptied if I had still been living, and then travelled with him to Fulworth and stood beside him as he unpacked most of it again, but I did not feel any particular emotion about the change of location. As long as I was with Holmes, what did the surroundings matter?

When he pulled a photo of us free from a box and set it on the centre of the mantelpiece, I felt the memory of the feelings I had experienced when the photo had been taken. It had been only a few weeks after his return from death, and a few days after my return to Baker Street. I had rather shamelessly bullied him into a trip to a photographer's studio to commemorate the occasion. I rather bitterly regretted not having any photographs of him during the time when I had thought him lost to me forever.

It seemed that the picture was to serve as a memento of me instead of him. The emotion that distant thought pulled from me was weak, but still managed to affect me. I glided to stand at Holmes's shoulder as he regarded the photograph. We both looked so young in it, so effortlessly pleased to be in each other's presence.

He touched a finger to the frame to straighten it and then returned to his unpacking, leaving me staring at the way his hand rested on my shoulder in the photo, as it would never do so again.

Holmes settled into his new life with an ease that I'm sure would have surprised all who knew him. He hired a woman from the village to cook and clean for him, took up swimming in the rock pools that lay at the base of the cliff next to his cottage, and bought himself a pair of bee hives. He spent his evenings writing, letting all the knowledge of criminal detection that he had built up over two decades of being at the peak of the profession spill out onto paper. 

I did nothing but watch him. Occasionally I attempted to speak to him, but there seemed increasingly little point. I was dead and he still lived, and the barrier between was too great to be bridged. I was merely a shade. There was nothing more for me than staying with him, unnoticed. That fact no longer made me as sad or angry as it once had; I was entirely resigned to my condition. It was what it was, and there was nothing to be done.

Holmes kept mostly to himself, although it did not take long in a village as small as Fulworth for every soul to know precisely who he was, and all his business. They respected his retirement and obvious desire for seclusion more than I would have expected. When he strolled along the beach, he was greeted with respectful nods that he returned, but generally he was left alone. 

The exception to this was Harold Stackhurst. Holmes met him the first morning after his arrival, when he ventured down to the rock pools with his towel for the first time. He swam for half an hour or so, and then pulled himself out and looked around himself with obvious pleasure at his surroundings, which were as different from London as was possible without leaving England.

Stackhurst appeared as Holmes was towelling himself off.

“Oh, hello,” he said brightly. “You must be the new occupant at Clifftop Cottage.”

Holmes turned his gaze on him. “Indeed,” he said. “And you must be Harold Stackhurst, unless there are other teaching establishments in the area run by old rowers.” Stackhurst looked startled and Holmes cracked a smile. “My name is Sherlock Holmes,” he said, holding his hand out.

“By Jove!” said Stackhouse, taking it eagerly. “Well, that explains how you know so much about me, I suppose. The famous detective himself! And you've taken Clifftop Cottage? Well, unless the fishermen have some dark secrets, I can't imagine there's enough crime around here to need a detective.”

“I should imagine there are far more dark secrets than you'd expect,” said Holmes, “but that is not why I am here. I have retired.”

“Retired!” exclaimed Stackhurst. “Why, you cannot possibly be old enough for that!” He flushed, apparently suddenly aware of how that had sounded. “Oh, I am sorry, I did not mean to be rude. I am just surprised, that is all. We get a regular subscription of The Strand at my establishment – some of the boys are enormous fans, they will be besides themselves to know you are now our neighbour – and I am sure there has been no sign in those stories that you were contemplating retirement.”

“Well, the nature of publishing is such that those stories were all written rather a long time ago,” said Holmes.

“Yes, yes, I suppose so,” said Stackhurst. “Let's see, which has been my favourite recently? Oh! The Thor Bridge one. Realising that the tiny mark on the parapet must have been caused by a revolver knocking against it – that was masterful, Mr. Holmes.”

“Thank you,” said Holmes, looking as pleased as he always was at such compliments, although it took someone who knew him as well as I did to perceive it.

The mention of my stories obviously prompted Stackhurst to think of me. He glanced up at the cottage on the cliff. “Has Doctor Watson come down with you? I should be very pleased to meet him.”

Holmes went as stiff as a board. “He has not.”

“Ah, no,” said Stackhurst. “I remember now; the last story said that he had married. I hope that he is happy and well?”

Holmes hesitated and then gave a curt nod. “As well as can be expected,” he said.

It seemed strange to me that he would not reveal the truth to someone who he was likely to see rather often, but I did not wonder at it for long before the feeling faded from my brain without prompting any explanations for his behaviour.

Holmes ended the conversation by claiming to need his breakfast, but he agreed to visit Stackhurst later that day. Within a few weeks they had fallen into the kind of easy friendship that Holmes had previously reserved only for me. I watched it happen and listened to their conversations, and felt almost nothing about the situation.

It is strange now to think how weak my spirit became during that time. I suppose it is proof that we are only the people we are because of our engagement with those around us, but it is still hard to know just how easy it is to slip away and become little more than a memory. In that state, I barely registered the passing of time, so that years went by without me taking much notice. Holmes's life in the country changed little in that time. He acquired a few more hives, published several more monographs and even solved a few cases by wire, but the basic facts of his life remained the same. It was a far simpler life than I would have expected him to be content with, but he showed no sign of restlessness.

In all that time, he never corrected Stackhurst on the matter of my status, or even spoke of me unless others brought me up. Even when they did, he answered so brusquely that they did not linger on the topic.

Still, that did not mean he did not think of me often, a fact I could tell even in my detachment. Despite the cluttered state of his cottage and the constant flow of items that had briefly interested him only to be put aside and forgotten about, the photograph of us remained in pride of place on the mantelpiece, where he looked at it at least once a day, usually more often. At night, after the woman he employed as a housekeeper had returned to her family, he would stand for long minutes in front of it, occasionally even reaching to touch the frame or the image of my face.

He did not sleep well, as he never truly had, and often emerged from his bedroom in the middle of the night to find something with which to occupy himself. With no other occupants of the cottage to object to the noise, this often took the form of long violin concerts. If anything could be said to have provoked an emotional response in me during that time, then hearing his instrument sing out the tunes that had been my favourites in life would be it, especially when combined with the expression of grief he wore at those times.

Four years passed in this manner. It seems a long time as I write that, but I honestly could not have told you at the time whether it had been four or forty. All I knew was that Holmes was still there, and that I must stay with him, even if he would never know of my presence.

One night in the June of 1907, Stackhurst visited Holmes in order to share a drink or two. That number became rather more over the course of a few hours and they both became flushed and energised by the alcohol. I watched from the corner of the room, not even feeling regret that I could not join in their talk. Indeed, I was barely even able to comprehend their talk as anything other than strings of sounds that meant Holmes was there and as content as he ever was.

There was a brief lull in the conversation and Stackhurst's gaze was drawn to the photograph on the mantel. “It is probably not my place,” he said, “but I do feel your Doctor Watson has treated you rather shamefully.”

My name drew me out of my shell a little, enough to create meaning from his words.

All traces of mirth were wiped from Holmes's face and his fingers clenched around his glass. “It is not your place,” he snapped.

Stackhurst raised a hand defensively. “Now, don't get like that,” he said. “I merely meant to say – he went and got himself married, and as far as I can tell, has not contacted you since. Certainly he has never visited in the time since you came down here. It seems a little hard, when you were as close as the stories imply you were.”

“Perhaps it is I who has not contacted him,” said Holmes. “You hypothesize before the facts.”

“I do not think you would have kept his photograph if that were so,” said Stackhurst. He hesitated and then added, “Besides, I have been in a similar situation. I had an intimate friend, with whom I shared everything. He married, and I have not since heard from him.”

“Ah,” said Holmes. “So you are fitting the solution to suit your own bias. You may rest assured, it was never Watson who put strain on our friendship. He was the best companion a man could ask for. And, as much as I hate to repeat myself, I feel I must reiterate that that this is not your business, and I have no interest in discussing it with you.”

I had begun to feel something through the course of this conversation, an unexpected rekindling of a fire I had thought long dead. How dare this man presume to engage Holmes on this topic? It was too mild, yet, to be called anger, but it was present none-the-less. I found myself shifting closer to Holmes, standing by his side in order to glare at Stackhurst.

“My apologies then,” said Stackhurst. “Let us turn the conversation. Doctor Watson is in your past, so do you have anyone in mind for your future?”

Holmes's eyebrows raised almost to his hairline, or rather, to where his hairline had been when he was a younger man. “Whatever can you mean?”

Stackhurst cursed. “I am going about this in a damnably clumsy way,” he said. He set his glass down and leaned forward. “Let me be frank. Holmes, we are both men of the world who find ourselves alone as we grow older. I see no reason why we should not seek comfort from each other.”

Holmes regarded him for a very long time and then put his own glass down. My mind was nothing but fog and I do not think I truly realised what Stackhurst was saying, although I was still experiencing the surge of almost-anger that his comments about me had provoked. My reactions were rather simple after years of existence as nothing but a wraith.

“Surely we are already doing that,” said Holmes in a quiet, tight voice that, if it had been directed at me, I would have known meant he did not want to pursue the topic any further.

Stackhurst was not so well versed in Holmes's unspoken cues. “No, I mean-” He stood and took a step to place himself directly in front of Holmes’s chair, and then sank to his knees. “Holmes. Please,” he placed a hand on Holmes's cheek. “Let me take you to bed.”

A wave of feeling drove through me, sending sparks through my mind and clearing out some of the clouds that had settled into place. This could not be allowed. Holmes was mine. I would not see another man touch him. I may never have had the chance, but that did not mean anyone else was permitted to take such a liberty.

“Take your hands off him!” I shouted and tried, futilely, to pull Stackhurst's hand away from Holmes's face. Neither man showed any sign that they knew I was there, but it was the most I had attempted to interact with the world of the living for years. The anger and jealousy surging through me did not leave much place for rational thought and despite my failure, I then tried to strike Stackhurst, only for my hand to pass through his head.

Holmes sat as still as if he were the wax model of himself he had had made so many years ago, and then he took Stackhurst's wrist and pulled his hand away. “I am afraid you have been mistaken,” he said. “I have no interest in such things.”

Stackhurst flushed. “That cannot be,” he said. “I could not be wrong about you and Doctor Watson, it is-”

“You are,” said Holmes with considerable force. “We were the best of friends, yes, but that is all. He was wholly conventional and respectable, for all that he saw fit to associate with someone as strange as I am, and the reason he has not been a visitor here, is the simple reason that-”

He broke off suddenly and then took a deep breath, as if fortifying himself to continue. “He is dead,” he said. “He did not marry, he died. And I will not have you sully his memory by casting such aspersions.”

“Dead?” repeated Stackhurst. “But you have always-”

“I have always kept as quiet on the subject as I wished those around me to be,” snapped Holmes. “I did not want a flood of condolence notes from those who had never met him, and so I wrote that he had married. I saw no purpose in correcting you when you mentioned it, because I did not realise that you would concoct this fantasy situation.”

Stackhurst gaped for a moment, then pulled himself together enough to get up off the floor. “Very well,” he said in an unsteady voice. “I apologise, then. I shall take my leave.”

“That would seem the best idea,” said Holmes.

Stackhurst left without further words and I glided after him to make sure he left the premises. I felt strangely territorial and did not completely relax until I had seen him onto the main road. I stood at the fence that bordered Holmes's property and watched him go.

“And do not try such a thing again!” I could not help shouting after him. I had regained energy in that flush of emotion, but I was more a creature of instinct than I was a rational man, otherwise I would never have acted in such a manner.

Unexpectedly, Stackhurst glanced over his shoulder as if he had heard my shout and then turned swiftly back and hurried his steps away. Had he seen me? 

The thought galvanised me further and I moved directly to Holmes's side. He was holding the photograph in one hand and staring at it as if it contained the answers to every question.

“You cannot let others touch you,” I said, hovering my hand above his shoulder. “Holmes, you are mine. I will not allow it.”

I was still acting on a very primal level. I was feeling more than I had in years, but only in a very simple, possessive manner. My mind contained nothing more than a burning need to keep all others from touching Holmes, from taking the place I had never even had. Looking back with a more rational mind, it is terrifying that I could become such a creature. I suppose it is when in that state that the dead become poltergeists and the other violent varieties of spirit.

“Watson,” said Holmes in a quiet, weary voice, and I started. Could he possibly know I was there?

“Holmes,” I said, “Holmes, please hear me. I am with you. I am always with you.”

He did not speak again, but he did let out a shuddering sigh and sag forwards, towards the space I occupied. His shoulder slipped through my hand, and the desire to take him in my arms and hold him close burnt through me with such strength that I could not help drawing in a breath. “Holmes,” I said again. “I will never let you go. You are mine.”

For a moment, the very briefest of moments, my hand solidified against his shoulder and I was able to feel the rough wool of his jacket. I made a shocked noise at the sensation but before it was complete, my hand was insubstantial again.

Holmes started and raised his hand to his shoulder, brushing at it and passing through my hand as he did so.

“Holmes,” I breathed. “Holmes, did you feel me? Can you hear me? Please, Holmes, you must know I am here.”

He was stock still for a moment and I began to hope that he had sensed me, but then he shook his head and replaced the photograph on the mantelpiece. He stepped back and glanced around the room. He picked up the glasses he and Stackhurst had been using and took them through to the kitchen.

“No!” I shouted, following him. “No, Holmes, you cannot just walk away from me! Pay attention to me!”

The moment had passed however, and he showed as little sign that he knew I was there as he ever had. He placed the glasses by the sink and then retired to bed. I am ashamed to admit that I continued to follow him as he went through his evening routines, still shouting words he could not hear. I called him a number of rather offensive names in my disappointment and rage. I think I was afraid that if I stopped, I would fade back to the shadow I had been for the last few years, and I would lose this new burst of energy that jealousy and hope had inspired in me.

He went to bed with me still railing at him and fell asleep despite my shouts in his ear. My emotions for the rest of the night ran rather fiercely, which I suspect kept my mind from returning to its previous state.

Holmes awoke early, as had become his habit as he grew older, and I was still energised enough to try and communicate with him as he gathered the necessary articles for his morning swim. As he walked down the cliffpath to the beach below, I attempted to place my hand on his shoulder again, but whatever power had allowed me to do so last night was denied to me that morning.

The frustration this caused was fuelled into anger by the appearance of Harold Stackhurst, coming from the direction of The Gables.

“Holmes,” he said, in a nervous, strained voice. “I was wondering if I would see you out.”

“Given that this has been my usual routine for years, and that you are headed to the same place as I am,” said Holmes, nodding in the direction of the bulging pocket that contained Stackhurst's bathing suit, “it would seem rather obvious that we would meet.”

“Ah, yes,” said Stackhurst. “I should have known you would see that. The truth is, I wanted to apologise for last night, and reassure you that there will be no repeat of the incident. I hope you will allow us to go on as we have been, these last few years.”

Holmes regarded him for a long while with his most perceptive look and then nodded curtly. “Very well.”

Stackhurst let out a long sigh of relief. “Good, that's good.”

Before they could continue the conversation, a man came into view on the path. His head rose above the edge of the cliff where the path ends, and then was followed by his whole figure, staggering like a drunk man. The next instant, he threw up his hands, and, with a terrible cry, fell upon his face. Holmes and Stackhurst immediately rushed forward and turned him on his back. I followed close behind and recognised the man as Fitzroy McPherson, the science master at Stackhurst's establishment. It was obvious that he was dying, even to non-medical men like Holmes and Stackhurst. His glazed sunken eyes and dreadful livid cheeks could mean nothing else.

One glimmer of life came into his face for an instant and he uttered two or three words with an eager air of warning. They were slurred and indistinct, but as I crouched close beside Holmes I was able to clearly hear the last of them, which burst in a shriek from his lips.

“The lion's mane!”

Then he half raised himself from the ground, threw his arms into the air and fell forward on his side. He was dead.

I was distracted from the reactions of Holmes and Stackhurst by the sudden appearance of McPherson's spirit, shimmering into place beside me. He stared down at his body with shock.

“What has happened?” he asked.

“You are dead,” I said, not even sure he would hear me, but his head whipped up and for the first time in over four years, someone's gaze focused on me.

“Dead?” he repeated, and then stared again at his body, which Holmes was starting to examine in his usual rapid manner. “Good Lord,” he said faintly. “I suppose my heart could not take it. I have long known it would be the end of me.”

His outline wavered and he started to become hazy. He stared down at his hand in shock. “What now?” he asked.

He was slowly but surely fading as I replied, “I think you are moving on.” I must admit to a strong sense of jealousy. Why was he allowed to move on after merely a few minutes stuck in this limbo, and yet I had lingered for years?

“Oh,” he said. He looked up as another figure arrived and fell to his knees by the side of his body. “Murdoch!” he said.

“Poor fellow! Poor fellow! What can I do? How can I help?” exclaimed Ian Murdoch, Stackhurst’s mathematical coach, looking distraught.

“I shall be leaving him,” said McPherson sadly. He was nearly entirely transparent now. “And Maud! Oh, my Maud!” He had gone before he had fully completed the final word. I reached for the space where he had been but there was nothing there, at least nothing I could sense.

Murdoch was dispatched for the police and Holmes started to examine the area minutely, examining footprints and other tiny marks that meant far more to him than they did to me. It was not until he had descended to the lagoon where McPherson must have been swimming that I realised what was wrong with his actions.

“Holmes, there is no need for this,” I said as he bent to look at McPherson's neatly folded towel. “You know what it is. You must know. The lion's mane – it is a jellyfish.”

Holmes did not hear me, of course. He hunted around the edges of the lagoon for whatever clues he could find.

Meanwhile, I leaned over the lagoon itself until I had located the tangled mass of the creature. It was lying upon a rocky shelf some three feet under the water, and was perfectly obvious to anyone who cared to look. I waited for Holmes to take that look, but he confined his investigations to the dry land.

“Holmes, come on!” I called. “I own the book that the phrase comes from, and I know you have read it. You have read every book either of us own, other than my adventure novels.”

There is very little that is as frustrating as knowing an obvious fact and yet being unable to communicate it to those who need to know it. As I followed Holmes back up the cliff to McPherson's body, I felt a great sympathy for his often short-tempered responses to being the only person who could see a solution.

He had a brief conversation with the village constable, and then returned to his cottage for breakfast, with me trailing behind, shouting, “Jellyfish! Holmes, jellyfish!” at him like a madman. It did not seem to sink in at all.

Stackhurst arrived at the cottage several hours later, during which time I had located the book I knew the phrase from – J. G. Wood's _Out Of Doors_ \- which was with most of my other books, tucked away on a crowded shelf in the garret of Holmes's cottage. I attempted to lift it, or at the very least move it in some way that would make Holmes notice it, but I could not make any sort of contact with it. It seemed my touch of Holmes's shoulder the night before had been a fluke.

Stackhurst was rather nervous at returning to the scene of last night's incident, but he soon calmed once it became clear that the thrill of a case had swept all memory of it from Holmes's head. I could have told Stackhurst that once Holmes was set on a mystery, all thoughts of a personal nature entirely ceased.

Stackhurst told Holmes about some girl at the village that McPherson had been sending letters to – the Maud he had mentioned as he faded into the next life – and they set off together to investigate the matter more fully.

I followed behind, still unspeakably frustrated that I could not tell them that this was a waste of time. Along the way, we met Murdoch coming from the lady's house. Stackhurst questioned him about his doings, Murdoch responded with anger, and in no time an argument had blown up. As an outsider, it was easy to see that both men's shock and grief over the incident were causing them to over-react. The conversation ended with Murdoch announcing that he was leaving The Gables and storming off, with Stackhurst and Holmes watching him as he left. I could tell from the speculative look in Holmes's eyes that he suspected there was more to the man's anger than met the eye, and I let out a long sigh.

“He is not a murderer,” I said. “Stop looking for a murder just because you miss investigating crime. It was a damned jellyfish, Holmes.”

We continued to the Bellamy's house, where Holmes interviewed the lady and found nothing to help the case, as I already knew. Holmes and Stackhurst discussed the possible guilt of Murdoch as they returned from the village and I found that the frustration that rose in me was enough to keep my mind free of the fog that had threatened to settle over me again. I had not been so desperate to speak to Holmes since just after my death, when I had realised how much I wanted to be able to communicate my last words to him.

A week passed. Holmes continued to show not a single sign that he had connected McPherson's final words with the writing of J. G. Wood. I spent one entire night whispering the name of the book into his ear as he slept, hoping that his unconscious mind would receive my voice better than his conscious one, but it was to no avail.

The inquest and Stackhurst's search threw no further light on the matter and I could tell that Holmes was finding his inability to find a thread to follow almost as exasperating as I found having the whole skein in my hands and yet being unable to pass it to him.

The woman who acted as Holmes's housekeeper was an avid follower of local gossip and had a tendency to pass on much of it to Holmes, which I suspect he enjoyed rather more than he let on. He always had liked to have a clear picture of the little intrigues that surrounded him. One morning, as she dusted around the piles of paper that she knew better than disturb, she told him about the death of McPherson's dog, which had apparently pined to death at the exact spot where McPherson had met his own death.

Naturally, Holmes's curiosity was piqued by this tale, as was mine. Was it possible that the dog had died of the same fate? That would mean the creature was still in place, lurking in the lagoon where it might hurt another unlucky swimmer. Holmes still went down to the beach every morning, although he had kept away from that place so far. What if he was caught by it?

Holmes hurried over to The Gables to examine the dog and the moment I saw it, I knew my fears were true. The body was stiff and rigid, the eyes projecting, and the limbs contorted. There was agony in every line of it. I knew then that if I did not find some way to communicate with Holmes, at least enough to set his own mind onto the correct solution, there would be another death. It was a horrible thought, given how impossible the task of passing any information over the divide between life and death had proved to be.

Holmes went back down to the beach. I am not ashamed to admit that I was desperately afraid the entire time he looked around the area in case he should stumble too close to the lagoon or decide to examine the water and get caught by the malevolent creature that I could still see lurking in the depths.

Holmes stopped still after having examined the traces of the dog and spent a while gazing into the distance, clearly deep in thought. I stood before him and tried, once more, to get through to him.

“The lion's mane, Holmes! Remember reading those words! It is a jellyfish!”

My words seemed to get me nowhere. There was a moment when he frowned and almost seemed to focus on me, but it passed and instead he turned away and started to climb back up the path to his cottage.

I followed closer behind him than was my usual habit, still loudly repeating the same information.

“ _Out Of Doors_ , Holmes! By J. G. Wood. It is on the third shelf of the second bookcase on the left of the garret. The lion's mane is in there – just read the book.”

He paused rather suddenly at the top of the path and I walked into him as I said the last words, quite literally as my spirit travelled through his body.

He let out a quiet exhale of realisation and then picked up his pace for the final stretch to his house. Had I managed to break through to him? Or had he finally made the connection on his own?

He went straight to the garret when he got to his cottage and I began to think that he was on the right track. However, after an hour or so's search, it was clear that he had no clear idea of where to start looking amongst the hundreds of books he had stuffed in that room – not just mine but his own extensive collection as well. I stood by the shelf that contained the volume he needed, calling to him that it was there, but I got nowhere. In desperation, I slide into the same space as him and repeated it again, but without luck.

I became increasingly desperate as he began to slacken his search, clearly losing purpose as he realised how unlikely it was that he would just stumble on what he was looking for.

“Here, Holmes!” I called to him. “The book is here!” I tried to take hold of it, frustration running through every line of my spirit, and was surprised to feel a slight sense of resistance as my hand slid through it. Was the strength of my emotions – not just frustration, but also the fear that the creature would kill again, and that its next victim might be Holmes – helping me to finally break through?

I concentrated on all the emotions that consumed me, and added my burning wish to have Holmes know I was present and my intense regret that I had left him to grow old alone, and then reached for the book again.

My hand gripped it. I pulled it free from the shelf with a force that made it slip from my fingers and fly across the room, striking Holmes on the head. Under any other circumstances, I would have found Holmes's reaction comical, but I was far too occupied with a flood of sheer joy and relief.

He staggered from the blow and then spun so quickly that he almost hit his head again, this time on the shelf behind him. 

“Who is it?” he demanded. “Who's there?” His eagle-eyed gaze swept the room, but apparently saw nothing.

“It is I,” I said. “Holmes! It is Watson.”

He did not hear me, but instead strode across the room, apparently intent on examining every inch. “Who is there?” he asked again when his search revealed nothing. “I am not some foolish old man who can be tricked with such games. Come forth and show yourself, or I shall call the police.”

He picked the volume I had flung at him off the floor, but he examined only the outside of it, apparently looking for the trickery that had caused it to leap from the shelf rather than reading it for information on 'the lion's mane'. It was clear that if I did not find a way to communicate with him further then he would become distracted by this new mystery and danger would continue to lurk at the bottom of the lagoon.

I looked around the room and spotted one of my old medical texts on a lower shelf. I crouched beside it and concentrated hard on recapturing the sensation that had allowed me to move the first book.

It was far easier that time. Once I had felt how it was done and caught the trick of it, it was much easier to make physical contact and pull the book from the shelf. It was more a case of gripping with my mind, with my feelings, than with the insubstantial memory of what had been my body.

The book slid onto the floor and I concentrated again to open it to the title page, where I had written my name as a student.

_John H. Watson_

Holmes watched the movement of the book with a look of shock that I could not recall ever seeing on his face before, and then he tentatively knelt beside it.

“Watson,” he breathed, touching the words on the page. After a moment though, he shook his head fiercely. “No, it cannot be. Such things do not exist.” He stood and looked around again. “You are seeking to trick me and I will not allow it.”

He bent to examine the shelf the medical text had come from.

“Holmes,” I said, with some exasperation. “Please, for once suspend your logician's mind, and just trust me. This is real.”

Once Holmes had found nothing, he stood and turned to take in the room. He had gone rather pale and I could see that he was trembling slightly.

“Whoever is doing this, step forward,” he said.

I moved to stand directly in front of him. “I am here, Holmes,” I said, and then reached for his shoulder as I had done so many times before. This time, I was able to clutch it as I had wished to be able to do since the day I died.

“Holmes,” I said, overcome with emotion at finally being able to interact with him. I reached out with my other hand until I was grasping both his shoulders. Only the desire to keep his face in view prevented me from indulging in a more engulfing embrace.

If Holmes had been pale before, he had gone stark white now. He reached for where I was clutching at him, but passed through my hands despite my grip on his shoulders.

“What is it?” he asked. “How are you doing this?” 

I squeezed his shoulders twice. “It is Watson,” I said again. “There is no need for fear.”

He started violently. “Watson?” he asked in a disbelieving, broken voice. “Watson, is that-? How can this be?”

“You can hear me?” I asked, even more surprised. “Holmes! Please, tell me you can hear me!”

“I can,” he said breathlessly. “I can. You are distant and faint, as if in another room, and not all of your words are clear, but I can hear you.”

I was unable to prevent myself from pulling him into a fierce, tight hug then, but maintaining contact with my whole body was too much and my concentration broke. I lost my grip on the physical plane so that I passed through him.

“Watson!” Holmes exclaimed, reaching out blindly and waving his hands through me. “Come back!” 

I took a breath and concentrated again, this time on just my hand taking his.

He clutched it tightly. “Good, good,” he said. “Do not go from me again. You have a lot of explaining to do yet.”

I laughed at that, letting out my exhilaration and pleasure. He clearly heard it, for his face lit up with an answering smile. “My god, it is good to hear your laugh again,” he said. “I did not realise how much I would miss it. Now, tell me all. What is the afterlife like? Why have you come back now?”

“I have been here all along,” I said. “It is only that now I have finally learnt to make my presence known.”

He frowned. “You will have to repeat that,” he said. “I am afraid I did not catch it all.”

I did so, speaking louder and slower.

“Here all along?” he repeated. “For all these years?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I suppose I have been haunting you.”

“Good lord! That must have been rather boring. There has been a marked lack of the kinds of wild chases and exciting events that you always relished. I am surprised you did not get bored and go elsewhere.”

“I could not,” I said. “I had to stay with you. Holmes, I could not have left you alone.”

He hesitated, and his face took on a sorrowful cast. “But as far as I knew, I was alone,” he said. “It was- Watson. I did not enjoy it.”

I gripped tighter at his hand. “I know,” I said. “I am sorry. I could not make you hear me. I could not work out how to touch anything. It was agonising.”

He nodded his head with two swift jerks, then was silent for a moment. “Well, that is remedied now,” he said. “Either that, or I have lost my marbles completely and am merely hallucinating this. Given how impossible I have found McPherson's death to solve, that is distinctly possible.”

“You have the answer to that case,” I said. “I threw it at you.”

He blinked rapidly, and then immediately spun away to find the book I had flung at him. He left his hand in mine, however, even as he flicked rapidly through the book with one hand. “Where?” he demanded.

“It is in the chapter on _Cyanea capillata_ ,” I said. “'The lion's mane.'”

“Oh,” he breathed in realisation. “Of course! Oh, I have been culpably slow!” He turned rapidly to the pages in which J. G. Wood detailed his experiences with the creature that had nearly ended his life. “To think that you solved it first,” he said distantly as he scanned the page.

I did not allow his incredulous tone to insult me. “Well, it was a phrase that stuck in my mind at the time I read it. I thought it was a rather over-dramatic way to describe such a beast.” I considered the matter. “I suppose McPherson must have thought the same, or he might have managed to come up with some slightly more meaningful last words.”

Holmes snorted, closing the book but not putting it down. “Your last words were a string of curse words, followed by the claim that you were fine. I hardly think you're in a position to judge McPherson.”

He had hit directly on my biggest regret. I clutched his hand with both of mine. “You cannot know how much I have wished that I had said more to you then,” I said. “I did not realise just how much I had to say to you until the chance of doing so was lost.”

“You have the chance now, old boy,” he said. He took a deep breath, then added, “We both do.”

My hands suddenly lost their grip on his and slid straight through. “Damn,” I swore, then tried again to take hold of him. I was unable to concentrate sufficiently to do so, however. I wondered if my powers had been temporarily depleted, or if that had been my only chance to touch my old friend again.

“Watson?” he called. “Watson! Please say you are not gone.”

“Still here,” I said, trying my luck on his shoulder, but I passed through it as I had done for so many years. “Damn it! Please say you can still hear me, at least.”

“Yes,” he said. “Although I am not sure I would term it hearing. I am not sure your words are arriving in my brain through my ears. It feels more as if I am using some new organ to perceive them, one I had never even considered might exist before. It is becoming easier to use – you are much clearer now than you were to start with.”

I raised my hand to his face, setting my fingers to his cheek and letting them hover there. He gave no sign he knew they were there. Indeed, he stared through me as if he were blind, focusing on the wall several metres behind me. It was a strange sensation, to be looked through so completely even as he spoke to me.

“That is good,” I said. “I am afraid that I have lost the skill to touch again, but as long as we can still speak, that is more than enough for me.”

“After years of silence, I agree completely,” said Holmes. “Come on, let us adjourn to the sitting room, which has the benefit of a lit fire.”

He took the slim volume with him, but abandoned it on the table in favour of pouring himself a rather strong drink and then settling down in his chair. He seemed to have thrown off all his earlier shock and wonder, and other than the size of the drink he had poured, there was nothing in his manner to suggest that he found the situation at all remarkable.

“I cannot believe how well you are taking this, Holmes,” I said as I settled into the chair opposite him. “I should have thought that evidence of the supernatural would be met with the utmost scepticism from you.”

Holmes shrugged that away. “The evidence is rather overwhelming,” he said. “If I cannot trust what my ears are hearing, or what my flesh felt earlier, then I cannot trust anything, and I may as well indulge in believing the most favourable version of events. Besides, I have wanted to have you back with me so often over the years, it seems churlish to question the manner in which that is accomplished.”

Ah, there was the practical side of Holmes that I knew well. “That is true, I suppose,” I said.

“And,” he said slowly, “although I disregarded it as the tricks of a desperate mind, I suppose I must admit that I have felt your presence with me, on-and-off through the years. I could not point to any concrete evidence of it, but I often felt you were with me.”

I was surprised by that, for he had never given any sign that he felt any such thing. “I was,” I said. “I always was.”

“Yes,” he said shortly. There was a pause and then he raised his head to stare at the chair I was in, although I could tell he still did not see me. “The other night, you touched my shoulder, didn't you? After Stackhurst had gone?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “I could not manage it again, however.” I hesitated, then added, “He made me rather angry and that gave me strength. I think he saw me as he left.”

Holmes raised an eyebrow. “Indeed?” he said. “I suppose it would have been a strange scene to observe. And he said such unpleasant things about you – my fault, I suppose. I should have told the truth when I arrived here.”

“It was not what he said about _me_ that made me angry,” I admitted.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “You always cared for my reputation more than I did. No need to fear, my dear Watson, I am rather too old to embark on that kind of thing, and especially not with a man like Stackhurst. He is pleasant enough as a friend, but I- Well. I have long since given up interest in such things.”

There were rather more implications to that than I would have expected, but I could not tell if I was merely reading into it what I wanted to be true. “I remember your rather forceful opinions on the softer emotions,” I said, somewhat tentatively.

“Yes,” he said shortly, then took in a deep breath. “Looking back, it is possible I rather overstated the matter. It is not as if one has much choice in such things, after all, and there is no true way to eradicate such feelings once the seed of them is planted.”

That was the perfect opening for me to confess my own feelings. I had spent so many years yearning to be able to express the words burning inside me, wondering if he truly had kissed me as I lay dying, and what that had meant to him. This was finally my chance to unburden myself and make sure that Holmes understood the depth of my emotions for him.

I did not take it. I was too scared of his reaction, of losing him again now that we had finally found a way to connect with each other. The kiss, if that was what it had been, seemed too much like a dream to be trusted as an indicator of how he might take such a statement. Instead, after a small pause had passed, I changed the subject to some of the tunes I had heard him composing on his violin. It was the action of a coward and I was rather ashamed of myself, but not enough to take it back and declare myself.

We talked all through the night, about anything and everything. We covered every aspect of the life he had led since I died, and that I had watched, unseen. It seemed we had as much to say to each other as we ever had, as if the years since my death were merely a brief hiatus in the conversation we had been conducting since we first met.

I did not need sleep, of course, and Holmes had long trained himself to stay awake all night without apparent effect, so neither of us noticed the time passing until the sun was bright enough to shine through the curtains and glint off the glass of the photograph on the mantel.

Holmes checked his pocket watch. “It is morning,” he said. “Early yet, but I should alert the authorities to the answer to the riddle of McPherson's death.”

“And have someone deal with the menace,” I added. “It is still in that lagoon, you know. I saw it yesterday.”

“Yes, most definitely,” said Holmes. He looked down at his clothing, which was rumpled from a long night. “I shall wash and change, and then go down and take a look myself.”

However, this plan never came to fruition. After Holmes had refreshed himself and was having his early morning cup of tea, there was a call from Inspector Bardle of the Sussex Constabulary – a steady, solid, bovine man with thoughtful eyes, who was wearing a very troubled expression.

He was there to ask Holmes's opinion on whether or not he should arrest Mr. Ian Murdoch. Rather than tell him straight that there was a completely different villain in this case, Holmes played his usual game of stringing him along, pointing out the errors in his theory without ever providing him with the correct solution.

“Have you no alternative, Mr. Holmes?” asked Bardle once the case against Ian Murdoch had been thoroughly derided.

“Perhaps I have,” said Holmes. “But I do not care to discuss it until there is something solid to discuss.”

I let out a long sigh. “Just tell the poor man, Holmes. Surely there is no need for this elaborate secrecy?”

The only sign that he heard me was the briefest twitch of amusement in the corner of his mouth, but he continued to refuse to answer Bardle's questions.

“You really are the most infuriating man when you put your mind to it,” I remarked.

There came a tremendous interruption before further words could be exchanged. The outer door was flung open, there were blundering footsteps in the passage, and Ian Murdoch staggered into the room, pallid, dishevelled, his clothes in wild disorder, clawing with his bony hands at the furniture to keep himself erect.

“Brandy! Brandy!” he gasped, and fell groaning upon the sofa.

He was not alone. Behind him came Stackhurst, hatless and panting, almost as _distrait_ as his companion.

“Yes, yes, brandy!” he cried. “The man is at his last gasp. It was all I could do to bring him here. He fainted twice upon the way.”

I immediately fell to my knees beside Murdoch, wishing there was a way I could examined him properly. Holmes poured the brandy immediately and Murdoch downed it in one gulp, and then pushed himself up on one arm and swung his coat off his shoulders. “For God's sake! Oil, opium, morphia!” he cried. “Anything to ease this infernal agony.”

His shoulder was marked with the same pattern of red, inflamed lines that had covered McPherson's body. I bent as closely as I could to examine them, and then gave Holmes a series of orders that he, thankfully, obeyed without question. He poured more brandy down Murdoch’s throat and applied pads of cotton-wool soaked in olive oil to the wounds to ease the pain, although it did not help him as much as I might have hoped.

“You have morphine hidden away, Holmes,” I said, watching my patient's agony as his heart struggled to cope with the impact of the creature's sting. “Now would be a good time to bring it out.”

He started, as if he had not realised that my years by his side would mean I knew all his secrets. I suppose it was a bitter realisation for a man as private as he, although he must also have realised that I knew he had not given in to the temptation of resuming the habits of his younger years, not even when the grief of my passing must have been most acute.

Murdoch let out a gasping breath that was more a groan of pain and I could see beads of sweat dropping from his brow. “Quickly,” I urged Holmes.

He let out a small, frustrated noise, and then turned on his heel and hurried to his bedroom. “My housekeeper will be on her way here,” he said over his shoulder as he went. “Go and hurry her, will you, Inspector?”

Bardle nodded, gave Murdoch one last glance, and then left to do just that.

“You will be fine,” I said to Murdoch, hoping that something in him could hear me. “Just hold on, you will pull through this.”

My words did not have the effect I was hoping for, as it was at that moment that he stopped breathing and every muscle seized up, contorting his body into the most complete picture of agony I had ever seen. His hands clutched at his chest and his face began to turn black. His heart had stopped.

“Ian!” exclaimed Stackhurst, flapping his hands rather uselessly.

I put my hand on Murdoch's chest, but of course it passed straight through. “Come on!” I hissed with annoyance, just as Holmes arrived back in the room and paused in shock.

“What needs to be done?” he asked.

“I don't know!” wailed Stackhurst. Both Holmes and I ignored him.

“His heart needs to be restarted,” I said, “but I cannot- Oh!” An idea occurred to me, one that would have been impossible for any other doctor.

I took a deep breath to steady myself, but there was no time to be wasted. Already, Murdoch was looking closer to death than life. I reached for his chest again, this time deliberately putting my hand through his body until it was where his heart lay. I shut my eyes, the better to concentrate, and sought to make contact with that dying organ.

As I had discovered the night before, the key was to reach more with my mind than with my body. I pictured the inside of a human body, the memories of cutting open cadavers in my anatomy classes flashing before my mind. I did not want to become fully tangible, merely enough to grasp his heart and manipulate it into resuming its work.

The moment I felt that warm flesh beneath my fingers, I knew I had managed it. I squeezed once, twice, and then it gave a violent shudder that made Murdoch cry out, and restarted its own pace.

Stackhurst let out a horrified gasp and I opened my eyes to see him staring directly at me. “My god!” he choked.

“Watson,” said Holmes in a voice saturated with emotion, and I looked at him to find him meeting my eyes. He could see me.

I pulled my hand from Murdoch's chest. “The morphia,” I said, and Holmes broke himself from his trance to hurry forward with the syringe he had unearthed.

“That was-” gaped Stackhurst. “Good God, Holmes! That was Doctor Watson! Have we gone mad?”

“I cannot speak for you,” said Holmes, carefully administering the drug, “but I know I have not. Not quite yet.”

Murdoch let out a long sigh as the drug took its affect, and then his head fell heavily upon the cushion. Exhausted Nature had taken refuge in its last storehouse of vitality. It was half a sleep and half a faint, but at least it was ease for the pain.

“I think he will be fine now,” I said.

Stackhurst staggered to the nearest chair and collapsed in it. “I don't- Holmes! Did we just see the spirit of Doctor Watson?”

“For a brief moment, yes,” said Holmes, checking Murdoch's pulse and then covering him with a blanket. “However, it is a more recent death that I think we should be concerning ourselves with.”

“I am not sure I can cope with this,” said Stackhurst in a wavering voice.

Holmes scowled at him. “Pull yourself together, and tell me how you found Murdoch.”

Stackhurst took a deep breath and managed that, at least in part. “Down at the beach. Exactly where poor McPherson met his end. If this man's heart had been as weak as McPherson's was, he would not be here now.”

Holmes nodded, looking thoughtful.

Bardle arrived with Holmes's housekeeper, who let out a cry of shock at the sight of Murdoch.

“He is doing well,” Holmes reassured her. “He just needs rest now. There is urgent need for us to deal with the menace that did this before it causes more harm, however. Could we leave this man in your care?”

“Of course!” she said.

“Excellent,” said Holmes. “Come on then, gentlemen.”

Stackhurst rose from his chair rather shakily, glancing around the room as if expecting me to burst forth from the walls. I must admit to rather enjoying his reaction. The jealous, angry part of me that had erupted into life the previous evening wanted to shake him and shout that this was why his advances had been unwelcome, because Holmes still had me and always would. However, I was in command of my faculties enough to see the errors in that statement. The relations between Homes and myself had never been such as to prevent him from such advances; it was his own solitary nature that kept him from such things.

Leaving Murdoch with Holmes's housekeeper, we all went down to the beach. Holmes went around the lagoon, peering closely into the depths until he spotted the beast.

“Cyanea!” he cried. “Cyanea! Behold the Lion's Mane!”

I must confess to laughing at this point. His love of melodrama had long been a source of amusement to me, and the wild gestures as he called out to the other two men the solution that had eluded him so long called to mind a number of other occasions on which he had presented the answer to a case with all the showmanship of a circus ringleader.

I saw from the way he twitched that he had heard my laughter, but it only served to make his act even more flamboyant. He was playing to his favourite audience: me.

“It has done mischief enough. Its day is over! Help me, Stackhurst! Let us end the murderer forever!”

Together, they rolled a boulder until it fell on the creature, crushing it and killing it instantly. After that, nothing remained but Holmes's explanation, which he gave back at his cottage, in the study where Murdoch was looking much recovered, although still rather ill. I examined him as closely as I could while Holmes went through it for Stackhurst and Inspector Bardle, omitting any mention of my role. By the time he was finished, I was confident that my patient needed nothing more than several days of rest.

I communicated this to Holmes and he told Stackhurst that if he could provide transportation, Murdoch was fit to be moved back to The Gables to recover.

“Of course,” said Stackhurst. “I shall return now and arrange it. And, Murdoch, I should like to apologise for my actions over the last week. I hope you will accept my apologies, and that you will ignore my hasty words and stay on in your post. I should not have been so hasty to judge you.”

“It is fine,” said Murdoch. “I know I am not the easiest person to get along with, and that makes it difficult to trust me.”

“Well, I shall try to be less quick to judge in future,” said Stackhurst, and then left with a nod to Holmes and Inspector Bardle.

Bardle left not long after, already bemoaning the paperwork that he would need to fill out. Holmes and Murdoch ate lunch together, a broth that the housekeeper had clearly provided with Murdoch's recovery in mind.

“I notice that you did not say whether or not you will stay at The Gables now,” remarked Holmes once they had eaten, and he had lit his pipe.

Murdoch gave a wry smile of acknowledgement of that. “I am not yet sure if I will,” he said. “McPherson was truly the only person there that I felt friendly with. Without him around, I am not sure there is much to keep me here. Besides, when one loses a close friend, it is hard to continue in the patterns which you had used to share together.”

“Yes,” said Holmes heavily. “That is true.”

Murdoch was silent for a moment, and then ventured, “I was sorry to hear about Doctor Watson's death.” Holmes flinched, and Murdoch hastily added, “I am sorry if you do not wish to speak of it – I know that you wrote that he had married – but I was in London at the time, and read it in a newspaper. When I saw that you had retired a few months later, well – I imagine you know what I mean about wanting to move on after McPherson's death.”

Holmes regarded him for a long moment and I could see that he was thinking of the ways in which he and Murdoch were similar – both solitary, taciturn men, aloof with most people, who had found one person with whom they could be close friends. He took a breath and admitted, “It was difficult. I had always had cases that he had not helped me with, and I had been a detective long before I even met him, and yet after he was gone, it did not seem as if I could find any pleasure in it without him there beside me.”

I could not prevent myself from reaching for him. I concentrated so that when I placed my hand on his shoulder, it rested there rather than sliding through. His muscles tensed beneath my grip, and then relaxed.

“But that was years ago,” he said. “Life continues, and moves on.”

“Yes,” agreed Murdoch. “I just do not think it will continue for me here. I will find another place, I think, although I will continue until the end of the term. Stackhurst is already down one master, after all.”

There was a rap at the door, announcing that the driver from The Gables had arrived. Murdoch was wrapped in blankets and rather pale when Holmes saw him off, but the knowledge that McPherson's killer had been vanquished had visibly calmed his mind.

Once he was gone, Holmes retreated to his beehives. He busied himself with the tasks that he had rather neglected over the last few days in his preoccupation with the case. I stood by and watched him, as I had done for so many years now – I dare say I knew almost as much about bee-keeping as he did by that point.

“Watson?” he asked after some time had passed.

“I am here,” I confirmed.

“Yes,” he said. “You are always here – that's what you said, is it not?”

“It is,” I confirmed.

He was silent for a few more minutes, as the bees buzzed around him and through me.

“Why is that?” he asked eventually. “I mean, would you not have rather continued on to whatever else awaits? To join Mary, perhaps?”

I took a moment to wonder how to answer that, and his head jerked up. “Watson?” he asked again.

“I am still here,” I confirmed. “I am just not sure how to answer. I have no certainties about how this works. The simple fact is that I have not moved on because I cannot. I watched McPherson's spirit fade away to whatever awaits the soul, but I have never worked out how to manage that myself.” I paused, and then added, “I suppose that is because I have not wanted to. I have made no great effort to discover the way into the next world, because I do not yet wish to leave this one.”

“I see,” he said quietly. “Then there is something keeping you here? The popular imagination would suppose you had unfinished business, if you have not yet moved on.”

“Yes,” I agreed, thinking again of all the words I wished to say to him that still had not passed my lips. Perhaps it was finally time to let them out. Keeping quiet now that I had the chance to speak, after so many years yearning to communicate the emotions in my heart was not only cowardly, but rather ridiculous. 

I took a deep breath, despite the uselessness of such a gesture for an incorporeal being, and spoke, “It is you.”

“Me?” he asked with surprise.

“Do you remember my death?” I asked.

His face became shuttered. “Rather more vividly than I wish to.”

“I lost the power of speech before I lost consciousness,” I said. “As I lay there, unable to communicate and watching the look on your face, all I could think of was all the things I wished to say, and yet were unable to do so. You mentioned my last words and how wholly inadequate they were yesterday. I have been longing to rectify that since I realised that I was dead and that you could not hear me.”

He was very still. “I can hear you now.”

“Yes,” I said. There was no sense in further prevarication. It was time to take my courage in both hands and let my heart be known. “Well, then, Holmes. I wanted you to know just how important you have been to me, how lucky I have counted myself to have you as my friend. It was an honour.”

“For me, too,” said Holmes. “But those are things you had already made clear – in your writing, if nowhere else. You must have known that I already knew them.”

“Yes,” I acknowledged. “But they are- there is more. It- Holmes.” I stopped myself before I started to lose all coherency, and took a moment to pull myself together and find the words I wanted to say. In the end, the simplest ones seemed the best. 

“I loved you. Love you, I should say – death has not changed that. I have loved you for a long time, as I would a spouse rather than a friend.”

Holmes's eyes suddenly focused on mine and he gave a short exhale. “Watson,” he said in a low voice. “I can see you.”

I glanced down at myself, but could not see any difference. “Perhaps because I am finally doing what I am meant to do,” I said. “I am finally saying the words.”

“Say them again,” said Holmes.

I looked at his face and realised that it was transformed. His eyes were wide and shining, and the creases that age had left on his face seemed to have melted away, as if he were still the young man he had been when we first met.

“I love you,” I said again, and he beamed. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

He stepped forward and took my hands without his eyes leaving mine. I found I barely needed to concentrate at all to make a physical connection with him.

“Watson,” he said with emotion. “My dearest Watson. You must know that I feel the same.”

A lightness came over me, as if a burden I had not known I was carrying had been lifted from me. “Oh,” I said quietly.

“You are glowing,” he said with wonder, his eyes darting over my figure.

It is hard to explain the feeling that came over me. It was as if I had been in a dark prison, and then turned to see a door that had never existed before open wide behind me, and golden light spilling through it. I knew, in that instant, precisely how to move on, how to step into the infinite beyond that waited for me.

I believe I gasped with the realisation. Certainly I gave some outward sign, for Holmes’s hands tightened on mine.

“You can now move on,” he said. “You have completed your unfinished business.”

“Yes,” I agreed. I was focusing internally, on the marvels that I could feel on just the other side of the veil.

“Watson,” he said, and his voice was as I had not heard it since that long ago day when I died on our carpet at Baker Street. “You- you are leaving me again.”

I pulled my mind away from the mysteries that lay ahead in order to look at him and the look on his face. “No,” I said, for the idea was horrific.

He shook his head. “You are fading,” he said. “It is time, I suppose. You- you must be weary of existing only as a spirit.”

The next world called to me, an enticing lure that spoke of comfort and rest, of meeting with all those who had gone before me, of finally understanding my part in the world. I cannot properly describe the sensation, for human language does not contain the words for it, but my spirit longed for it.

And yet, I could not go. Holmes’s eyes showed me too clearly just what a loss it would be for him. He had only known I was there for a little over a day and now he faced to lose me again, just as we had finally admitted all that we were to each other. My unfinished business was settled, but I abruptly realised that I had yet another task to complete.

The door in my mind slowly swung shut again, blocking out the world beyond.

“You are solidifying,” said Holmes in a shocked, hushed voice. “Watson-”

“I have business that is yet unfinished,” I said. “I have been with you all these years – in life and in death. It would be wrong to leave you alone now.”

“Do not stay for my sake,” he said, although his grip on my hands – now hard enough to hurt, if a spirit could be capable of pain – said otherwise.

“I am not,” I said. “I am staying for my sake. I do not want to move on without you, Holmes.”

His pleasure at that statement was more than enough to justify my decision and clear away any doubts I might have had. “My dearest Watson,” he said, and leaned forward enough to press a kiss against my lips. The second we had shared, but the first I was able to actively participate in.

****

Our embrace continued for some time. I was filled with a dancing joy that I was able to harness in order to retain my ability to touch Holmes. We stood amongst his bees and engaged in acts that would have been considered publicly indecent between a man and a woman, not to mention two men, one of them dead. I concentrated as hard as I could on feeling Holmes’s body pressed against my spirit, he ran his hands over the line of what had been my back, and our mouths stayed pressed together the entire time.

It was not to last. My strength failed and I lost my solidity. I stumbled forwards, through his body, and swore.

“I am sure your language has got worse since your death,” remarked Holmes.

“I’m hardly about to shock any ladies with it,” I replied, straightening up and trying to place my fingers on his face. His eyes had lost their focus and I knew without asking that he could no longer see me.

My efforts to re-establish contact failed and I let out a gusty sigh as I let my hand drop away again.

“Never mind, dear boy,” said Holmes, without needing to be told what my exhalation signified. “There will be time for such things later.”

“I was enjoying having them now,” I said, perhaps a little petulantly.

He merely laughed. “Watson, consider the position we were in this time yesterday morning. Complaining in the light of how it has changed seems churlish.”

That was entirely true, and so I set my annoyance at my limitations aside. “I just hope that you remain able to hear me,” I said. “I could not stand to go back to being completely imperceivable.”

“I do not think you need fear that,”he said, bending to complete his checks on the final hive. “Your voice has only become clearer to me as time has passed. The evidence strongly suggests that the change that has allowed you to become audible to me has been in me, rather than you. Knowing what I should be listening for has made me able to perceive your voice with some sense that I would previously have dismissed as impossible.”

I considered that. “So you will always be able to hear me, then.”

“I pray so,” he said. He straightened and his eyes sought out the source of my voice. “Watson, as much as I enjoyed seeing you again, not to mention touching you, hearing you again is much the most important thing to me. It is your conversation I have missed most.”

I favoured him with a bright smile that he could not see. “Yes,” I agreed. “The same is true of me.”

Despite not being able to see the expression on my face, he was still able to reflect it with his own. I found myself filled with a surge of gratefulness that our situation had changed so much, and that I was not merely watching him go about his business, numb to all things but the importance of standing by his side.

“Excellent,” he said. “Then let us go inside. I feel the need for a cup of tea and a pipe, and a conversation with my closest friend.”

****

And so I come to the end of this part of our story. I have remained at Holmes’s side as promised, although I am only visible to him in moments of extreme emotion, and my ability to touch him comes and goes. He is always able to hear me though, and that is by far the most important thing to us both. Being able to talk to Holmes, to get carried away in long conversations that stretch long into the night as we used to when we were both living men, has kept me from losing myself as I did in those grey few years after my death.

He commented once or twice that it seemed unfair that I saw every moment of his life in those years and yet he has only the vaguest idea of my existence during that time, and so I have written this chronicle, using the very pen that I could not grip that long ago day in Baker Street. I am rarely able to grip it for longer than a half hour, but I have none-the-less managed to bring my work as his biographer up-to-date. Should the increasing numbers of telegrams from the Foreign Office and the dark rumblings in the political atmosphere of Europe come to mean what we both fear, and Holmes is forced into service again, then I shall be with him for every step of it and will write up as much of it as I may. God willing, that will not happen, and _The Lion's Mane_ will remain Holmes's last case.

One day, his turn to escape the mortal coil will come and he will join me on this spiritual plane. Together, we shall open that door that still hovers in the background of my mind and whatever comes next, we will face it side-by-side, as I pray we will always be. A preacher would claim that some of the acts we have engaged in since that second kiss have damned us to an eternity in Hell, but as long as we are together, what power could Hell have over either of us? At any rate, I do not believe that I would have been allowed to linger here, at Holmes’s side, if such a thing was sinful in the eyes of God. I believe that when the time for us to step through that door does come, it will be to a place of joy and peace, one that we will share together.

But the sun is up and I can hear him moving in his bedroom. The completion of this manuscript has filled me with enough emotion to make me strong enough to make his tea for him, and to give it to him with a morning kiss, and so I lay my pen down.


End file.
